I'm catching up... honestly I am. There are many wonderful albums to talk about, more than I can cover in one article. But, I'll make a start and then add more in a later article. Today, I want to visit several terrific Pure DSD256 recordings from Eudora, Hunnia, and Yarlung. Plus some outstanding high resolution recordings from Channel Classics, Sono Luminus, Sound Liaison, and TRPTK. I'm going to miss some additional wonderful releases, but I'll come back to them. Promise.
Preludes and Dances from Brazil, Ricardo Gallén. Eudora Records 2025 (Pure DSD256). HERE
"Oh, WOW!" Deep satisfied sigh... My first reaction as the music began to flow out of this marvelous new album from Spanish guitarist Ricardo Gallén. This album—performance, music, sonics—is just a sublime listening experience.
Ricardo Gallén is a renown master of the guitar. I've admired his performances for years. His 2018 album, En Silencio, music of Barrios and Brouwer, on Eudora Records was awarded "Record of the Year" by NativeDSD HERE (deservedly so). I wrote about his excellent 2014 album, Fernando Sor: Guitar Sonatas, HERE.
This new album is dedicated to the works of the legendary composer Heitor Villa-Lobos and to the Grammy-Award winner Sérgio Assad. Both Brazilian, this recording represents a homage and a celebration to the country's folklore and rich cultural heritage. The album opens with Sérgio Assad's Colloquial Preludes, dedicated to and commissioned by Ricardo Gallén. It then rolls into Villa-Lobos's iconic Préludes and the Suite populaire brésilienne.
About the music, Sérgio Assad writes in the enclosed booklet, "Villa-Lobos, a towering figure in Latin American music, drew heavily from Brazilian folklore and traditional music, incorporating these elements into his compositions to celebrate the country's rich cultural heritage. His Suite populaire brésilienne, for example, skillfully blends European dance forms like the scottish, mazurka, and waltz, with Brazilian musical elements, using the word "choro" to emphasize the Brazilian character. In contrast, the preludes written by me do not rely solely on folklore but rather explore a broader spectrum of Brazilian popular music. This diversity reflects the vibrant tapestry of Brazil's musical landscape, showcasing influences from various traditions."
And Gallén's performances are stunning—deeply immersive, filled with color, technically brilliant.
Recorded in the gorgeous acoustics of the 13th Century Convent of San Francisco in Ávila, Spain, the album is a tour de force of audio sonic excellence. This, my friends, is how solo instrument performances should be recorded. Master recording engineer Gonzalo Noqué sets a standard of excellence here that challenges all other recording engineers.
So, stop reading and go get this album! I can't recommend it more highly.
Bartok & Ligeti: From Microcosm to Macrocosm, László Borbély. Hunnia Records 2024 (Pure DSD 256) HERE
Hungarian pianist László Borbély is both an insightful musician and a skilled technician. His recordings of Bach, Bartok, Messiaen, Ligeti and Liszt are favorites of mine. His musicianship is masterful and the scope of his interests are most engaging. I consistently find that the insights he brings to his performances are most enlightening.
In this album, Borbély treats us to a constantly alternating stream of contrasting musical visions. Listening to both Bartok or Ligeti, their sound is what first grabs you. Not like any other music you've heard. The dense, haunting chromatic wails, crunches, and clusters that inform the work of both. But hearing their works alternately contrasts is like an aural tennis match—one's ears being constantly knocked this way, then that way, by the contrast.
One would think the music of these two Hungarian composers would be more similar, but it is not. At least not as selected by Borbély for this recital, which I hear as a lesson in contrasts.
Borbély writes, "Listening to Bartók and Ligeti's works in this selection, we can expect a ‘cosmic disorientation', a total reinterpretation of all our knowledge thanks to Bartók and Ligeti's microcosm and macrocosm...Although Bartók's Mikrokosmos series of more than one hundred and fifty smaller and larger works was originally written with a pedagogical purpose—for no other reason than to support his own son Peter's piano studies—it is the essence of his music. And anyone who wishes to study Bartók's oeuvre in the depth it deserves should begin with these works, since they offer the inexhaustible inexhaustibility of Bartók's inspiration."
Bartók's work was influenced by folk music from Eastern Europe, Turkey, and Algeria. He was also influenced by Romanticism. Ligeti was influenced by Scarlatti, Chopin, Schumann, and Debussy. He also experimented with non-Western tuning and the rhythms of South American and African music. Their music is are so similar, and yet so very different. Thank you, László Borbély, for giving us this opportunity of contrasts and similitudes.
As always, Borbély's playing is completely assured, commanding even. His is a technical prowess that is rock solid, and a reassuring pleasure to hear.
This release is a Pure DSD256 recording and the sound is as clean, pure, and transparently resolved as one can possibly hope. The powerful sound of Borbély's Steinway D concert grand piano is captured most impressively.
Highly recommended!
László Borbély
Persist, ETHEL, with Allison Loggins-Hull on flute. Sono Luminus 2024 (DXD) HERE
The album is Persist, the performing group is ETHEL, the Grammy-winning, genre-defying string quartet. The music is modern, innovative, challenging, and a thorough treat. Allison Loggins-Hull, composer, flutist, joins with ETHEL to solicit, select and collaborate with composers from historically underrepresented backgrounds. Supported by two NEA grants, the program was premiered in 2022 at Brooklyn Public Library, and will tour in 2024-25.
The performances are alert, crisp, and energetic—in sum, "keenly alive," as Gramophone says.
If you enjoy contemporary classical music, I think you will enjoy this album. I found it a complete delight to hear. And I will return to it, the true test of a good album.
Moreover, Sono Luminus recording engineer Daniel Shores has given us yet another of his sonic delights. I always welcome hearing his new recordings, and in this one he's at the top of his game. Well done, Daniel!
ETHEL, with Allison Loggins-Hull, in performance
Hildegard And Her Sisters, Katelyn Bouska. Yarlung Records 2025 (Pure DSD256). HERE
We last heard Katelyn Bouska in her marvelous debut album for Yarlung Records, Women and War and Peace, which I reviewed HERE. She has now returned to Yarlung for this new album celebrating the great composer, mystic, poet, philosopher, scientist, rabble-rouser and visionary abbess Hildegard von Bingen.
Bob Attiyeh writes in the liner notes: "Hildegard is the first composer for whom we have a definite name in the European canon. She was born in 1098 and died in 1179 at 81 years of age...To help place Hildegard in wider European history, she was born a mere 32 years after the Battle of Hastings, 47 years before the start of construction of Chartres Cathedral, and Henry IV was Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire after inheriting Charlemagne's throne in Aachen."
For the album, Yarlung additionally commissioned four new pieces. Three pieces are composed by Bouska responding to Hildegard's vocal music and adapting it for solo piano. The fourth is a work by Maya Miro Johnson (2001-) that reprises, in a single work, an earlier large concerto on which she and Bouska had collaborated. This new work, bruises paraphrase, is a fresh solo piano version. Maya wrote about his work, "Ultimately, invisible wounds are the hardest to heal because they are the least likely to be believed. We invented machines to try to capture and record these inner traumas, manifesting them as scratches on the surface of time itself.... The machine at the center of this piece, like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, is monstrous but deeply sympathetic. Absence is at the center of this work, but not necessarily loss, just as a bruised mind is not by default a broken one."
Ruth Schönthal's (1924-2006) Canticles of Hieronymus, transports the listener as deeply and eerily as do three paintings by Hieronymous Bosch (c. 1450-1516) for which the piece is named. Bouska included another of Schönthal's works, Fragments from a Woman's Diary, in her earlier album for Yarlung. I was delighted to hear this additional work from her opus.
Sláva Vorlová's (1894-1973) Sila svetla (The Power of Light) was written in 1949 following her survival of WWII. Bouska explains: "On May 8, 1945, the day following the Nazi surrender, the Gestapo murdered her husband in front of Sláva. She credits her survival to her connection with music. She wrote Síla světla (The Power of Light) in 1949. In solitude and stillness, we see a composer turning inward in a balance of intricate pianism and evocative harmonies. With simple arpeggiated chords punctuating the main beats, she divides the measures into stable pillars. Incisive dotted rhythms, typical of the Czech language, evoke the static nature of seclusion. And then, suddenly, bright flashes of light dance across the keyboard in rapid arpeggios. With the power of this compressed energy, the final measures erupt from D-Flat Major into a glorious and slightly shocking D Major with its radiant F sharps. The sun in its full golden splendor has risen after a horrendous night."
The album opens and closes with two works by the American composer, Amy Beach (1867-1944), whose music I always welcome. In this case, the works are A Hermit Thrush at Eve and A Hermit Thrush at Morn, both of which are well known works by Beach and always enjoyable to hear—particularly so in the sympathetic hands of Katelyn Bouska.
As with Bouska's earlier album, there is a bright intelligence at play throughout her performances. One almost hears her mind singing through agile fingers as the music flows.
The quality of Yarlung's recording in the Samueli Theater at Segerstrom Center for the Arts, where the earlier album was also recorded, is simply superb. Yarlung Records' founder and recording engineer, Bob Attiyeh, is a perfectionist; he records with a purity that I relish. And, he records simultaneously to Pure DSD256 and analog tape. Hurray!
Finally, here's a sentiment from Bob regarding this recording venture, with which I can strongly relate:
"... and while I do not believe in frequent divine intervention for such things, we asked Hildegard to "bless the more than 50 vacuum tubes" that we would need to be working perfectly for the recording."
Yarlung Records co-recording engineer Arian Jansen, and 50 vacuum tubes
Weill, The Seven Deadly Sins, Little Three Penny Music, Sir Simon Rattle, London Symphony Orchestra, and soloists. LSO Live 2025 (32-bit DXD) HERE
I have a fondness for the music of Kurt Weill. I love his acerbic wit and his sideways take on society. In this new recording from LSO Live of a 2022 performance, Sir Simon Rattle delivers a fully alive, strikingly sharp, rendition of The Seven Deadly Sins. The vocalists are excellent. Czech mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená sings the lead with energy and wry shaping to the delivery of her lines—I love it. Her suave delivery of the German text contained no theatrical histrionics, just a self-knowing directness that made the listening experience so much more impactful.
Given what I'd read from the music critics who attended the live performance about balance problems and not being able to hear the vocalists, I was not sure I was going to like this recording. The Barbican Centre concert hall is a notoriously difficult venue acoustically. But I find the recording to be completely coherent, balanced and detailed. The recording engineers have captured a far more balanced sound quality than the audience may have heard. It certainly appears that the unidentified recording engineers have solved the nut of this difficult recording space.
While the Rattle, and orchestra deliver the goods in The Seven Deadly Sins, their vision of the Little Threepenny Music is simply to tame and polite for my tastes. It completely lacks the sardonic bite that makes this music so engaging. Their rendition of "Mack the Knife" is a polite waltz—sorry that just doesn't work for me. The rest is light and engaging, not at all distressing, and just politely enjoyable.
So, recommended for The Seven Daily Sins and the wonderful performance by Magdalena Kožená. The rest is fine, just a bit of a yawner.
Yellow Butterfly: Latin American Favorites, Dana Zemtsov and friends. Channel Classics 2025 (32-bit DXD, DSD256) HERE
Ah, one of my favorite violists, Dana Zemtsov, playing some of her favorite Latin American tunes, and joined by compatriots Anna Fedorova on piano, Angelo Verploegen on flugelhorn and trumpet, Claudio Constantini on bandoneon (and arrangements), Nicholas Schwartz on double bass, and André Groen on percussion.
I was immediately drawn to this release because of the artists involved, each of whom I've greatly enjoyed over the years in other recordings. And, as expected, the playing is very stylish, with great ensemble and nuance. While the performances may not evince the ultimate in Latin flair, the music is played with a lot of loving fun and enthusiasm by the performers. You can tell that they are enjoying themselves as musical elements are stretched, held, and passed around (listen to "Quizás Quizás Quizás," track 3). Each time I've listened to this album over the past two weeks, I've enjoyed it more and more. And the more I turn up the volume, the better is sounds.
The stereo recording by Jared Sacks is excellent, with all of the transparency, detail, and balance among the performers that we've come to expect from his recordings over the years. And, as is typical of Jared's recordings, the dynamics are completely natural as in the live performance—very very quiet to knock your socks off loud—so be aware.
Haydn String Quartets Op. 77 & Folk Music from Scotland, Maxwell Quartet. Linn Records 2025 (192k) HERE
The Maxwell Quartet "get it"—their Haydn is bracing, energetic, and great fun. I first encountered them with their earlier release of Haydn's String Quartets Op. 74 which I reviewed HERE. As with this release, that album also included music from Scotland in honor of their heritage and having nothing to do with Haydn. In both albums, the Scottish tunes are excellent, extremely well performed, and a pleasure to hear. But it is ultimately the Haydn String Quartets for which we come to both of these albums. And, in this respect, I say that the Maxwell Quartet hits it out of the park.
Recommended!
Morton Feldman, Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello, Live performance by Nieuw Amsterdams Peil. TRPTK 2024 (32-bit DXD, DSD256) HERE and HERE
1-hour-and-19-minutes of "eh?" I have not known the music of American composer Morton Feldman (1926-1987), this is my first exposure. It's like a Jackson Pollock painting–what is going on? Time to dig in and try to understand.
Feldman completed his piano quartet, which is not actually titled as such but rather Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello, on May 28, 1987. He could not have foreseen that this would be his last work. He was diagnosed with aggressive pancreatic cancer only a few days later. The work was premiered in the composer's presence at the Eleventh Festival of New Music in Middelburg, a Dutch provincial town, a bit over a month later on July 4. Two months after the premier on September 3 1987, Morton Feldman died at the age of 61 in his hometown of Buffalo, New York.
This performance was recorded live at the soundsofmusic festival in Groningen (NL) on November 3rd 2023.
Feldman is renowned for compositions that are simultaneously the longest, softest, and slowest. At well over an hour, this composition is actually rather short by comparison to Feldman's other works. For Feldman, sound (and non-sound: silence) comes before all else, only then do form, technique, and rules enter. Like John Cage, who greatly influenced him, Feldman commented "For me at least sound was the hero, and it still is." And when sound and non-sound are supreme, time loses relevance. As does time signature and tempo. The sound simply is and is not.
So, for anyone looking for structure, thematic development, or, heavens forbid, melody, look elsewhere. That is not what Feldman is about. As the writer of the excellent enclosed booklet, Elmer Schönberger, states, "The music is varied in its uniformity and uniform in its variety: from a distance it essentially seems the same, but heard up close, it is always just slightly different. If there is any system at play, it is well hidden. Some melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic motifs appear and disappear again, others keep returning, preferably untransposed, sometimes in a slightly altered form. Since the music is fundamentally chordal—with the piano and strings consistently alternating—the rare melodic motifs stand out... The four-note chromatic figure with which the piece ends (B♭-B-C-D♭) has sounded only twice before and seems to have a future. But that is an illusion. It has been enough. Here the music ends. No, it doesn't end, it simply gives up—'dies of old age.'"
And for all of this lack of structure, there is shape, there is an intentionality that subtly begins to penetrate as one absorbs the sounds and non-sounds over time that is no longer time. It becomes engaging, entrancing even.
Ultimately, to my tastes, I place this music in the category of exploration—my exploration for understanding. Similar to standing before a Jackson Pollock painting, don't try it intellectualize it. Just allow it to seep in. And as you do so, your consciousness begins to embrace the lack of structure, embrace the flow that is sound and non-sound.
Of course, the recording by Brendon Heinst is of superb quality as always. So that is a pure delight.
Morton Feldman
Carmen Gomes Inc., Thousand Shades of Blue—HRES Revisited. Sound Liaison 2012 2025 (96kHz, 32-bit DXD) HERE
After a dozen years, Sound Liaison decided to revisit and remaster this excellent album from Carmen Gomes and her band. And, yes, they've made a very nice improvement in sound quality over the original 2012 release. The new remastered release sounds much more open, far less processed, and much more natural. (Reissue cover on left, original on right.)
About this new release, Sound Liaison chief engineer, Fran de Rond, and producer Peter Bjørnild, say:
"A major decision in our remix process was to eliminate all compressors from the original mix. This approach allowed for more headroom and breathing space, enabling the natural dynamics of each musician to shine in their full detail. The music now flows with an organic energy that captures the intensity and subtlety of every performance.
"Perhaps the greatest beneficiary of the remastered sound is singer Carmen Gomes..."
And this is decidedly true. Carmen Gomes sings with supreme attention to each syllable, imparting meaning and emotion with each carefully chosen inflection. Always perfectly on-pitch, always stretching to extract the fullness of meaning in the lyrics, Gomes is a great performer. This new mastering grants to the listener a clearer window on her voice than we heard in the original, and a allows for a greater appreciation for her artistry.
The entire soundstage received a thorough scrubbing in the process of this new mastering. In addition to eliminating the compression, Fran took the file into the analog domain for mastering. This trip from the original 24-bit 96khz file into analog and then re-digitization at 768kHz-32-bit has worked wonders in opening up the harmonic nuances that were captured by the original recording, but not revealed through the original mastering process. I've never been a big fan of multiple format conversions, but the results heard here are compelling.
Yes, all these improvements are clearly audible, definitely beneficial, and very welcome. If, like me, you admire the artistry of Carmen Gomes, you will welcome the sonic improvements of this new mastering. Great work!
Carmen Gomes
Herman Vogt Cello and Piano Concerto, Anna-Maria Helsing, Audun Sandvik, Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Sveinung Bjelland. Lawo Classics 2025 (32-bit DXD) HERE
Herman Vogt (b.1976) studied composition at the Norwegian Academy of Music and at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. His music has been performed at festivals in Sydney, Belgium, Oslo, Bergen, Copenhagen and Stockholm. In this album, the Norwegian Radio Orchestra presents two striking works by Vogt highlighting his intricate interplay of soloist and orchestra.
I always enjoy the playing of cellist Audun Sandvik, who delivers an emotionally satisfying and tonally rich performance of Vogt's Cello Concerto. The work is modern, but tonal. Complex, but expressive and highly dynamic. The contrasts of the cello and dynamic power Vogt mastery shines in this piece as he balances the cello's expressive voice with the dynamic power of the orchestra.
The Piano Concerto, featuring Sveinung Bjelland as the soloist, is equally captivating, but in a very different way. This work contrasts virtuosic piano passages with sweeping orchestral textures. It is an intricate soundscape that keeps shifting and evolving. Pay attention! This is not a work suitable for background music, it is a work that puts the listener to work—and that's a good thing.
Lawo recording engineer Thomas Wolden delivers yet another excellent recording, with excellent balance of orchestra and soloist while capturing the inner detail of orchestral passages brilliantly.
Overall, Herman Vogt's music on this album challenges, yet rewards significantly the listener who pays attention. Recommended!
Olivier Messiaen - Harawi (Chant d'amour et de mort), Anna Molnár, mezzo-soprano, László Borbély, piano. Hunnia Records 2025 (Pure DSD256) HERE
Okay, this album is not going to be for everyone. I like it, but I like lots of things that Ann thinks are definitively strange. This is one of those. And it is exceptionally well recorded voice and piano in Pure DSD256. Come on!
But seriously, Harawi, A Chant of Love and Death is undeniably strange, even for Messiaen who wrote the words as well as the music. Based in a characteristic genre of Peruvian folk poetry, originally related to tragedy, Messiaen adapts it to metaphorical dream descriptions, or 'celestial suggestions,' whose meaning lies precisely in their artistic ambiguity. This is Messiaen's mysticism meeting Peruvian folklore. As so often in Messiaen's work, rhythm is paramount with repetition used to create soundscapes with the singer often vocalizing imitative words that, through constant repetition, becomes almost vertiginous.
The composition places extreme demands on the two performers. I don't understand French (in which this is written and sung), so I'm missing the meaning of the lyrics. But that is not an obstacle to appreciating the demands and rewards of the music and the performers' communicative efforts. While Borbély is quick to caution that the extreme technical demands placed on the performers should not supersede the spiritual meaning, he also writes,
"Messiaen also requires the singer to use a number of extreme singing and voice-forming techniques, as can be heard, for example, in the eighth movement, Syllabes. Here, the singer uses her voice in a way that sometimes just bounces short syllables, at other times repetitive, reminiscent of the passionately rhythmic attitude of tribal music... At other times, she alternates between different tones in an unpredictable sequence, thus managing to maintain artistic tension and ultimately the listener's attention..."
All of which makes this a fascinating performance to experience, for indeed it is an experience.
If you enjoy the challenges Messiaen's other works, this album is well worth your investment. The music is intriguing, the performers are excellent, and the sound quality is of the best that Hunnia so frequently gives to us.
The Age of Extremes, music of W.F. Bach, G. Benda & C.P.E. Bach. Arcana Records 2025 (96k, DXD) HERE
I will end this article with a delectable recording of Baroque and early Classical period music performances by Il Pomo d'Oro.
The album starts with a thrill. Nowhere do the liner notes mention that the opening Harpsichord Concerto in F by Georg Benda (1722-1795) will be transcribed for flute. In fact, it is only the final work on the album, the Harpsichord Concerto in B Minor by Benda, that actually features the harpsichord as the principal instrument. What fun to have one's expectations turned so delightfully upside down. And the change to flute works just beautifully.
This music is of that transitional period from the High Baroque of J.S. Bach, Handel and Vivaldi to the emerging Classical. The two eldest Bach sons, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach were already regarded as leading representatives of the new age during their lifetimes. Their works are still valued today as paradigms of the style developed by their generation, with C.P.E. perhaps outshining his other brothers with the innovative nature of his works. The brothers Franz and Georg Benda, who also came from an influential family of musicians, further contributed to this musical transition.
In the performance of these works, harpsichordist and conductor Francesco Corti leads the Il Pomo d'Oro in some lively and greatly entertaining flights of creativity. The composers encouraged performers to extemporize, to add their own cadenzas, in the performance of these works. Often inserting "free sections" into event the most structured of compositions, the practice encouraged self-expression and innovation. It makes alternate performances of these works most interesting to discover because the best artists will add something of their own expression, taking the work into entirely different directions (witness the substitution of flute for harpsichord in two of the three harpsichord concertos on this album).
The performers instruments are beautifully captured in this recording by Arcana in Sala della Carità, Padua, Italy, January 2024. This album is perhaps a testament to what can be achieved by excellent microphone technique, skillful management of the associated electronics, and subsequent mastering. I say this because it was originally recorded at a mere 96kHz, but it sounds exceptionally transparent and detailed, belying the relatively low resolution. Kudos to the recording and mastering engineer Ken Yoshida.
Il Pomo d'Oro with harpsichordist, organist and conductor Francesco Corti
All images courtesy of the respective labels.
