Hi-Res Downloads

Subtitled ‘The Sacred Polyphony of El Greco’s Toledo’ this 70m selection of a mass by Alonso Lobo and motets, etc, by various composers, celebrates devotional music associated with Toledo Cathedral, and links to the painter who came to the city in 1557. Ensemble Plus Ultra comprises a small consort of singers, formed in 2001, who specialise in early Spanish music: their 10CD Archiv set of sacred works by Victoria was a runaway success. The unaccompanied voices, close-set in a reverberant acoustic have a strong presence. The music, of course, is by no means ‘easy listening’ (surprisingly, it was a Classic FM mid-May album choice), although the ‘et incarnatus est’ section in the Lobo Credo is strikingly lovely.

Appropriately, the veteran bass player’s second album with his trio starts with a delicate, considered bass-led piece, ‘Contact’. It starts with taut, cleanly-recorded solo bass, gradually joined by the slightest of shimmers from Joey Barron’s cymbals and the odd subtle chord from pianist Marc Copland, before settling into a more familiar piano trio form. Even then, Peacock is constantly busy in the background, and Barron rock-solid.

Unusually, perhaps even a ‘first’, DG offers this at 192kHz/24-bit resolution. Kremer’s new programme – two really lightweight pieces and more substantial fare by Philip Glass and Giya Kancheli – was last month’s Album Choice CD [HFN Oct ’15] and, we thought, worth revisiting at this higher resolution. The eight-movement Glass Violin Concerto No 2 is a kind of response to Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ (although ‘Movement III’ is more suggestive of the Brahms). There’s some astonishingly wonderful music in it and the higher-resolution option certainly makes the reiterations of, for example, ‘Song No 1’ seem more purposeful.

Still in his 20s, acclaimed pianist Giovanni Guidi is regarded as one of the most original and inventive pianists on the Italian jazz scene. While he accompanied trumpeter Enrico Rava on his ECM albums Tribe and the live On The Dancefloor this is his first album for the label as a band leader, where his creatively daring improvisations are shared with American bassist Thomas Morgan and Portuguese drummer João Lobo. ‘The Forbidden Zone’ demonstrates Guidi’s talent for creating sublimely haunting atmospheres, its meditative melody achingly beautiful in its apparent simplicity. And ‘Just One More Time’, in which the bass and drums are given space to work out, highlights the recording’s splendidly natural feeling of musicians performing in a room.

Authentically Norwegian as Torvik and trio may be, Tranquil Fjord commences just as you might fear, the opening title track plinking a New Age path into a gentle guitar-led arrangement, meandering slowly through shallows rather regimented in their quantisation, and underlain by an intrusively full-width soundstage granted to the percussion of Hermund Nygård – close-miked snare brushes lent distracting prominence. These two qualities, forward percussion and ‘swinglessness’, continue even on speedier pieces such as ‘Kryssande’ and ‘Land Veg Helm’, bass and guitar each lacking a fully resolved space in either soundstage or equalisation, all three performers instead firing from the same place. When Torvik gives his guitar synth a few directionless refrains at the close of ‘Endelaus Veg’, it encapsulates the general meaninglessness of it all. JF Sound Quality: 70% Hi-Fi News Lab Report Unlike the ‘96kHz’ Mike Oldfield: Five Miles Out download (reviewed here) the limited ~20kHz bandwidth of this 24-bit recording is perfectly in keeping with its claimed 44.

There’s an apparently unlikely, but close, relationship between Japan and Brazil, and from this background come the works of Goro Ito. This guitarist, composer, arranger and producer is heavily influenced by João Gilberto, and has performed both solo and as part of the bossa nova duo Naomi+Goro. Here he joins forces with Brazilian cellist Jaques Morelenbaum for a programme paying tribute to songwriter/singer Antônio Carlos Jobim, best-known as the writer of ‘Girl From Ipanema’. In a set combining Jobim’s compositions and originals from both performers, they’re joined by Morelenbaum’s wife Paula as vocalist on three tracks, with daughter Dora on one.