August Winds (2014)

Original soundtrack collection from Studio Ghibli includes 12 soundtrack CDs for animation films directed by Hayao Miyazaki all composed by Joe Hisaishi. These CDs have been remastered in the HQCD format for the best sound and are fully compatible with standard CD players. Their covers are cardboard sleeves faithfully replicating the original LP cover artworks. Comes with a bonus CD and a catalog booklet.

David Friedman - Futures Passed (1976) {Enja Japan CDSOL-6534 rel 2014}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 212 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 91 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 14 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1976, 2014 Enja Records / Solid Records Japan | CDSOL-6534
Jazz / Bop / Post Bop / Vibes

Not to be confused with Don Friedman, the pianist. This one's a vibes player…. and very good he is too. Earfood Vibraphonist and marimba player David Friedman has recorded and played extensively since the early '70s. He studied drums in the mid-'50s, and marimba and xylophone in the '60s. Friedman attended Juilliard, with major emphasis on percussion. He was also tutored by Teddy Charles and Hall Overton. Friedman played with the New York Philharmonic and Metropolitan Opera in the '60s, then worked with Wayne Shorter, Horace Silver, Joe Chambers, Hubert Laws, and Horacee Arnold in the '70s.

The two works on this disc perfectly illustrate a particular type of secular cantata, the so-called ‘dramma per musica’. In such works the libretto is constructed dramatically, and the singers embody various roles, such as gods and other characters from antiquity, and allegorical figures. The parallel with opera is apparent, although the ‘drammi per musica’ do without any scenic element. Bach primarily used the form in works intended for princely tributes or academic festivities: educated audiences could be expected to recognize the characters and literary traditions involved. Both cantatas recorded here are ‘academic’ cantatas, composed in honour of eminent members of the faculty at the University of Leipzig.

Wes Montgomery - In The Beginning: Early Recordings from 1949-1958 (2014) {2CD Set Resonance Records HCD-2014}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 759 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 325 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 224 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1949-58, 2014 Resonance Records | HCD-2014
Jazz / Bop / Hard Bop / Guitar

Rare Wes Montgomery material is hard to come by. Not counting Willow Weep for Me, the posthumous LP Verve issued in 1968 not long after the guitarist's passing, there was Resonance's 2012 set Echoes of Indiana Avenue, which contained largely live performances from 1957 and 1958. In the Beginning, released three years after Echoes, draws from a similar well of unreleased recordings, offering a heavy dose of live material along with five sides produced by Quincy Jones at Columbia Studios in 1955, plus three tracks a session at Spire Records in Fresno, California in 1949.

"The Key", the debut album of the Mauritian pianist now resident in France, Jerry Leonide, is the key to a whole world; to the music and joie de vivre of an island paradise 1,700 km from the coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean. Leonide translates the irresistible, bouncingly danceable, clearly African influenced grooves and light and breezy crystal-clear melodies of his homeland into the vocabulary of jazz. He himself says of his debut: "For me 'The Key' is the revelation of Mauritian music before the eyes of the world." His global piano playing enthralled the jury of the "Solo Piano Competition 2013" at the Montreux Jazz Festival so much that they awarded him first prize.

For his project of recording the complete symphonies of Anton Bruckner on CPO, Mario Venzago has chosen to record each symphony with a different orchestra to re-create the sounds that Bruckner would have heard. Considering that Bruckner's experiences with orchestras spanned three decades, he would have witnessed growth of the orchestra's size and the introduction of new instruments, which clearly influenced his decisions when he composed and revised each work. Venzago performs the Symphony No. 8 in C minor with the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, following the 1890 version and employing the same instrumentation and ensemble scale, as well as traditional practices that are documented in performances from that period. The result is an Eighth that sounds strikingly different from the other symphonies, quite far removed from the early Romantic orchestra he used in the First, and considerably expanded from the ensembles he would have expected for the Fourth or even the Seventh symphonies.

Released by Legacy in the U.K., this compact box set contains 20 albums – inside adequate LP replica sleeves – released by Philadelphia International. When it was issued, it retailed at a price that was roughly equivalent to the sum of three or four full-price titles, which made it a significant bargain. These albums don't represent the absolute best that PIR had to offer; instead, the box offers an assortment of commercial hits and misses, creative masterpieces and not-quite-failures, and showcases a significant portion of the label's roster.

In his final performances with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in August 2013, Claudio Abbado conducted Anton Bruckner's unfinished Symphony No. 9 in D minor, and this recording is drawn from the best takes from those concerts. Considering that this rendition came near the end of Abbado's life and stands as a worthy testament to his achievements, it's easy to read too much into the interpretation, and to view it as a mystical or transcendent reading because of the circumstances. On the one hand, Abbado's understanding of this symphony was as thorough as any conductor's, and the Lucerne musicians played with seriousness and dedication, offering a version that has impressive power and expressive depth. On the other hand, there are many competitive recordings that either match Abbado's for strength and feeling, or surpass it in purely technical terms of sound quality and reproduction. Certainly the sound is exceptional, according to Deutsche Grammophon's high standards, and this stereo recording is exceptionally clean and noise-free.