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I absolutely adore Ingvild Koksvik. A small part of that is because she's this beautiful and almost ethereal creature wandering through vast Norwegian landscapes and singing in this clear and goosebump-inducing voice that is sounds like it's from a dream, one of your favorite dreams, the kind that make you regret you eventually woke up—and... Read More »

Fiona Joy - Into The Mist I have been spending some time with several new titles from Cookie Marenco's Blue Coast Records, all in Quad DSD. One of them was by an artist that I've developed a great deal of affection for, Fiona Joy. The album is entitled Into the Mist, and for me, that... Read More »

Tchaikovsky, Symphonies 1, 2, and 5. Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Vasily Petrenko. Onyx 4150 (2 CD's) Vasily Petrenko found the poetry in Shostakovich—what will he find in Tchaikovsky? Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2 are my favorite of the six and we seldom hear them: Winter Dreams and the Little Russian. People of my generation know... Read More »

Like most audiophiles who are into jazz, I tend to reach way back into history for my sonic fixes. I'm talking late '50s and early '60s, of course, and maybe a few Three Blind Mice titles from the mid-'70s just to mix things up. The idea of choosing a modern jazz piece as a reference,... Read More »

When listening to this album, I found it difficult to do so with a strict, examining state of mind. I wanted to capture all of the technicalities and mechanical bits within each song, so that I could later articulate what those ingredients did to either help or hurt the album. I wanted to listen to... Read More »

One of the advantages of writing about LPs and turntables for the last 18 years is that sometimes records just show up in my mailbox without warning or reasonable explanation. I know nothing about Chicago's Milk Factory Productions, and even less about The 3.5.7 Ensemble, but my intuition tells me that the same intrepid individual... Read More »

Prokofiev, Scythian Suite & Symphony No. 3. Orchestra: Sao Paulo Symphony. Conductor: Marin Alsop. Recording: Naxos NBD0047 There certainly are significant differences in the music composed by Prokofiev compared to those famous Russian composers that preceded him. It is our good fortune to have his compositions available now. Yes, he turned out those compositions needed by performers in the... Read More »

Mozart, Sonatas for Violin and Piano, Alina Ibragimova, violin. Cédric Tiberghien, piano. 2 CD's. Hyperion CDA 68091. Most of us know when we're hearing the real Mozart and not a near miss, we know in our heads and elsewhere what is required of a genuine Mozart performance. Today we have the composer's Sonatas for Keyboard... Read More »

Schnittke, Penitential Psalms; Three Sacred Hymns. RIAS Kammerch0r, Hans Christian Rademann, conductor. Harmonia Mundi 902225. Russian Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998), as I've written many times before here, is one of those second generation modernists who makes you go to him and who generally makes you glad you did. His Penitential Psalms confront us with sternness until... Read More »

Anne Bisson: Blue Mind, Co-sponsored by Wuti Larnroongroj, Brilliance Music and Studios and Gary Koh, Genesis Advanced Technologies. 15-ips, 2-track, reel-to-reel tape. Originally produced and recorded by: Guy St. Orge. Recorded July 21-22, 2008, Reference Studio, St-Calixte, Quebec. Remastered by Bernie Grundman. http://www.annebisson.com/en/. Price: $600. It's rare that performers get to revisit and remaster their... Read More »

Kinsky, Copula Mundi. SPV Poland/Requiem Records 104 | 2015. Premiere: 1993. Re-edition: 2015. Medium: Compact Disc The Kinsky band, which was created in 1992, existed only for six years and recorded only one album, but, perhaps thanks to this, it has become the legend of underground rock music in Poland. Its music is most frequently described as a combination of... Read More »

Bruckner: Symphony No. 3 in D minor, "Wagner" (Nowak ed., 1877) Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam/Nikolaus Harnoncourt Teldec 4509-98405-2. TT: 54.35 The "historical performance" movement that arose in the 1960s proved more popular, at first, among academics than among regular listeners; eventually, however, its notions of performing older scores without the stylistic accretions of later eras... Read More »

George Frederick Handel, Water Music. Academie fur Alte Musik Berlin. Harmonia Mundi HMC 902216. Handel was German, but he was also a Londoner for 47 years and lived and studied for four years in Italy. We can hear all of this in his music, an extremely satisfying blend of three distinct baroque musical cultures. He... Read More »

All of us who love music and audio have some sort of history that goes way back into our past. In my case, it was my Dad's love of all things classical and flamenco related in the vast world of the guitar. I grew up listening to Segovia, the Romeros, Sabicas, Montoya, and Bream, on... Read More »

Stefan Wolpe. Compositions for Piano, 1920-1952. David Holzman, piano. Bridge 9116. I decided I couldn't leave Wolpe where I left him last time out. Yes, he can be cerebral but there are other Wolpes whom I really only hinted at, mainly because Four Studies (1935-36) on the Bridge 9344 recording left such a strong impression.... Read More »

Homo Ludens. Piano Music of Lera Auerbach. Eli Kalman, piano. Centaur CRC 3441. There are three Lera Auerbachs (1973) in this program, held together by a powerful, singular voice that only becomes clear after extended listening. The first Auerbach we hear is in Images of Childhood (2000), a dozen short idylls focused on Auerbach's childhood... Read More »

In the world of Jazz, there are the greats, the near greats, the great-but-obscure, and the close-but-no-cigar. It's easy (but contentious!) to list the obvious first tier…my own list, in no particular order, would have artists like Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Nat King Cole, Charles Mingus, Billie Holiday, Count... Read More »

I've told this story before, so bear with me. I first met Janet Feder at the 2012 California Audio Show in San Francisco. That was the show that marked the US debut of the KEF LS50 loudspeaker—I know that because I supplied the Unison Research amplification that powered those amazing little Halloween-colored monitors. Janet walked... Read More »

Joan Tower. Violin Concerto. Stroke. Chamber Dance. Cho-Liang Lin, violin. Nashville Symphony Orchestra, Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor. Naxos 8.559775.   New Seasons. Gidon Kremer. Glass, Pärt, Kanchelli, Unabeyashi. Kremerata Baltica. Deutsche Gramophone. DG 4794817.   Rosary Sonatas. Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber. Rachel Podger, violin. David Miller, theorbo and arch lute; Marcin Swiatkiewicz, harpsichord, organ; Jonathan... Read More »