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94kHz/24-bit WAV, Linn Records AKD531 (supplied by www. linnrecords. com) This session came about by public demand – in between touring with her bands, Emily Barker was also playing solo acoustic shows of songs old and new, and kept being asked whether these versions of her catalogue were available to buy. As a result, she went into London’s Toerag Studios, known for its use of vintage equipment, along with producer Liam Watson, and recorded this live-to-tape, no edits set, accompanied only by her guitar and harmonica.

Daniel Hope and colleagues (the pianist is the wife of former Emerson Quartet cellist David Finckel) recorded this programme live at Lincoln Center in March ’15. Mahlerians will want primarily to hear the fragment composed in 1876, not well represented in the catalogue. But it’s rather repetitive and Mahler only found his true voice a few years later in the Klagende Lied. The Brahms (First) Piano Quartet is the one orchestrated by Schoenberg.

192kHz/24-bit ALAC/FLAC, CKD 479 (supplied by www. linnrecords. com) Most collectors will have discovered the Mozart Divertimenti and Serenades via Decca and its mono/stereo LP series with various Viennese ensembles, from the time of Willi Boskovsky. Linn’s enjoyable programme with the SCO players – pairs of clarinets, horns and bassoons – has more of an ‘outdoors’ style, fresh and open.

I guess when you get to your 12th studio album you might be forgiven for running out of steam a bit, but this latest package from jazz diva Diana Krall has been received with somewhat mixed reviews, since its belated release due to the singer/pianist’s illness. It’s a bit of an oddity, comprising mainly of ’70s ballads by the likes of Randy Newman, The Carpenters and Elton John, and with not much sign of the piano fireworks Krall has brought to bear on some of her previous outings. It may be the familiarity of so much of the material, or that these new recordings don’t bring too much we didn’t already know, but this does seem something of an exercise in treading water. Even a new song by Paul McCartney doesn’t help much, a duet on Georgie Fame’s ‘Yeah Yeah’ is only 50% successful(!) and, while the sound is workmanlike, even that doesn’t really stand out.

192kHz/24-bit ALAC/FLAC, CKD 462 (supplied by www. linnrecords. com) This first instalment in a new Sibelius cycle with the BBC’s Welsh Orchestra has prompted a mixed response. Criticism of the sound from Cardiff’s Hoddinott hall strikes me as spectacularly wrong (Gramophone) as – at 192kHz/24-bit at least – this is an extremely fine, natural orchestral presentation.

We’ve only just been introduced, and already 32-year-old Cuban-born Ms Pacheco is sitting at her piano in just her drawers – what is one to think? Actually, Marialy Pacheco already has six previous releases under her belt (not that she’s wearing one), and is an acclaimed classical and jazz pianist. This is simply her first album for the Neuklang label, and finds Pacheco going back to her Havana roots, accompanied by Colombian bassist and drummer Juan Camillo Villa and Miguel Altamar. It’s a tight little trio, able to kick back on tracks such as ‘Cambodian Smiles’ or motor through ‘En El Camino’, while the album centres around the pianist’s three-part ‘Cuban Suite’, exploring the country’s dance styles. And the ‘klang’ here is certainly impressive: yes, the piano is rather spotlit, but the bass and drums are resolved well, and this is a very attractive-sounding set.

44. 1kHz/24-bit WAV/FLAC/ALAC, Naim CD210 (supplied bywww. naimlabel. com) So what’s with the Hitchcockian title? Well, London-based trio Troyka tells us the title of its new album comes from guitarist Chris Montague’s fear of birds – this ‘escalated into an album set in a fictionalised London: a post-apocalyptic dystopian nightmare in which people have contracted a form of avian flu that is slowly turning them into human-size birds’.