Hamada

Transcriptions were an important part of Johann Sebastian Bach’s oeuvre. For a composer who never took formal composition lessons, they were pathways to knowledge that allowed him to assimilate different styles and expand his musical horizons.

After recording the second of Bach's four Clavier-Übung volumes, the harpsichordist Aya Hamada turns now to the last one: the legendary Goldberg Variations. The discography of the work is vast, but here Aya Hamada has chosen to perform it on an exceptional instrument: the 1624 Ruckers belonging to the Musée Unterlinden in Colmar. Recently restored, this harpsichord boasts a palette of rich, authentic tones: dark in the bass, like crystal in the high register. With it's unique timbre, this instrument enables the harpsichordist to give full expression to the successive metamorphoses of the poignant initial Aria, on which Bach built his greatest keyboard masterpiece.

Performed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Yuzo Toyama with soprano Rie Hamada. A beautiful digital recording of several rarely performed works by Takemitsu (the soprano part of the marvelous "Coral Island" is very difficult, for example, and the "Archipelago S" is for an unusual ensemble of instruments). Many of the subtleties of Takemitsu's writing are lost in recording (for example, subtle harmonics behind more foreground material), but the engineers made a good effort here.

Slender and amusing, cute visual and powerful voice. A full album of Hamada Maron that is fascinated with a wide range of world views is inherited while inheriting the deep and jazzy singing world, expressing the feelings of women colorfully, the feelings of melancholy and the madness of Maron's vocal are at their peak It has reached.

Raised in a refugee camp in Algeria, Aziza Brahim embodies and mourns the displacement of North Africa’s Sahrawi people. Her ascent has been steady rather than spectacular, her breakthrough coming with 2014’s Soutak, an elegant acoustic set that drew from her adopted Barcelona home. Here, Brahim embraces the electric desert blues popularised by Tinariwen and Tamikrest (with whom she shares producer Chris Eckman). It’s a buoyant sound – Brahim’s voice is too airy for drones and chants – led by rolling pieces such as Calles de Dajla and followed by slow, contemplative blues. At its heart is a title track grieving for the exiled thousands stranded in an inhospitable tract of Western Sahara, whose only escape is “music and imagination”.