Hi-Res Downloads

96kHz/24-bit FLAC, Harmonia Mundi HMC 902183. 84 (supplied by www. eclassical. com) Early, middle and late period sonatas are prefaced by the three sets of variations on this release, complementary to the violin sonatas with Faust/Melnikov [HFN Yearbook 2010, ‘Album Choice’].

Rarely does the evergreen Tom Petty disappoint his fans, his 13th album with The Heartbreakers proving to be no exception – except that it was three long years in the making. Perhaps because of this it feels over-produced and lacks any feeling of ‘performance’, despite the album being the band’s most rollicking and hard-rockin’ collection of tracks in a very long time. Power chords and jangling guitars combine with tremendous harmony vocals reminiscent of Petty’s outings when an angry young man in the ’70s. Of course we’ve heard it all before, but Petty’s song-writing remains as sharp and incisive as ever.

96kHz/24-bit WAV, ALAC, FLAC*, Naim CD195 (supplied by www. naimlabel. com) Burn is the 2013 debut album from the winners of a MOBO award last year. Sons Of Kemet are a London-based band famed for rattling the rafters with boisterous and eclectic jazz-with-a-twist.

There’s little musical innovation to savour in this collection of piano compositions from Canadian pianist Pascal Mailloux, whose career has been writing music for films, TV shows and commercials, and collaborating with Montreal-born singer Marjolène Morin (aka Marjo) over the years. Still, he does conjure up some delightful melodies, and the performances by his accompanists are polished throughout. I’ve found myself returning to ‘Morning Mist’ for its intriguing chord progression and Dave Gilmour-esque slide guitar break. And ‘October Sky’ is another infectious track.

96kHz/24-bit WAV, ALAC, FLAC, Naim Jazz Records Naim CD206 (supplied by www. naimlabel. com) Former Brand New Heavies keyboardist Neil Cowley – a child prodigy playing Shostakovich piano concertos at the age of ten – can arguably lay claim to being one of the world’s most heard pianists in current times, having accompanied Adele on both her 19 and 21 albums. This fifth release from the trio with drummer Evan Jenkins and bassist Rex Horan (who replaced Richard Sadler after 2010’s Naim album Radio Silence) sees Cowley once again crossing myriad musical boundaries.

Although the last two Schubert sonatas are reissues from 2002, Paul Lewis has re-recorded the A-minor and C-minor (D784/958), again at the Teldex Studios Berlin, last spring. And in any case we haven’t had the higher resolution until now. There’s very little difference in sound: perhaps the new recordings are in tighter focus with less ambient sound, but it’s marginal. No-one I have heard makes more sense of the central outburst in the Andantino of the Sonata in A (D959); and Lewis’s Schubert suggests more affinity with Beethoven in its overtness – it’s a very different approach from that of the ‘reverent’ Mitsuko Uchida or even Paul Lewis’s mentor Alfred Brendel (whose example he followed in 2002 by omitting the exposition repeat in D960(i) – perhaps one day he’ll be persuaded otherwise).