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SACD

Coleman Hawkins – The Hawk Flies High (1957) [MFSL 2006] [SACD / Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab – UDSACD 2030]

adminSeptember 21, 2025 213 Views

Title: Coleman Hawkins – The Hawk Flies High (1957) [MFSL 2006]
Genre: Jazz
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

The Hawk Flies High is a 1957 album by jazz tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins. Apart from Barry Galbraith and Jo Jones on guitar and drums, the line-up of his accompanying sextet had a bebop background, namely J.J. Johnson on trombone, Idrees Sulieman on trumpet, pianist Hank Jones, and Oscar Pettiford on bass.

Coleman Hawkins’ 1957 session for Riverside, aside from an oral documentary record in a short-lived series, was his only recording for the label under his name. Yet producer Orrin Keepnews had the good sense to invite the legendary tenor saxophonist to pick his own musicians, and Hawkins surprised him by asking for young boppers J.J. Johnson and Idrees Sulieman in addition to the potent rhythm section of Hank Jones, Oscar Pettiford, Barry Galbraith, and Jo Jones. The two days of sessions produced a number of strong performances, with Hawkins still very much at the top of his game, while both Johnson and Sulieman catch fire as well. Even though most of the focus was on new material contributed by the participants, the musicians quickly adapted to the unfamiliar music, especially the leader’s old-fashioned swinger “Sancticity” (which sounds like it could have been part of Count Basie’s repertoire) and the pianist’s tightly woven bop vehicle “Chant.” Hawkins was one of the great ballad interpreters, and his majestic performance of the standard “Laura” is no exception.

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SACD

Cliff Jordan & John Gilmore – Blowing In From Chicago (1957) [APO Remaster 2010] [SACD / Analogue Productions – CBNJ 1549 SA]

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Title: Cliff Jordan & John Gilmore – Blowing In From Chicago (1957) [APO Remaster 2010]
Genre: Jazz
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Clifford Jordan’s first date as a leader actually found him sharing a heated jam session with fellow tenor John Gilmore. Backed by pianist Horace Silver, bassist Curly Russell, and drummer Art Blakey, the two saxophonists square off mostly on obscurities (other than Gigi Gryce’s “Blue Lights” and “Billie’s Bounce”). This was one of Gilmore’s few sessions outside of Sun Ra’s orbit and, if anything, he slightly overshadows the cooler-toned Jordan. Recommended.

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SACD

Clifford Brown, Sarah Vaughn, Dinah Washington, Max Roach – The Clifford Brown Box [4 SACDs] (1954-1955/2020) [SACD / Esoteric Company – ESSE-90223/6]

adminSeptember 21, 2025 241 Views

Title: Clifford Brown, Sarah Vaughn, Dinah Washington, Max Roach – The Clifford Brown Box [4 SACDs] (1954-1955/2020)
Genre: Jazz
Format: SACD ISO

This Limited Edition 4-SACD box set contains four iconic jazz albums featuring Clifford Brown including Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Jams, Clifford Brown and Max Roach, plus Study In Brown. All albums were recorded between August 1954 and February 1955. ESOTERIC equipment used for re-mastering: The criterion of re-mastering is to faithfully capture the quality of the original master. Esoteric’s flag ship D/A/ converters, model D-o1VU, Rubidium master clock generator model G-0Rb and Esoteric Mexcel interconnect cables and power cords were all used for this re-mastering session. This combination of highly advanced technology greatly contributed to capturing the high quality sound of the original master. Experience by yourself: Experience the legendary performance in this new Super Audio CD/CD format. Not only for new followers, but also for well experienced followers of these recorded materials. All will be equally impressed by the “soul” hidden within the notes, but never before found in previously released recordings in any format.

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1 min read

SACD

The Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell – Schubert: Symphony No. 9 (1970-2019/2019) [SACD / Tower Records – TDSA-110]

adminSeptember 21, 2025 246 Views

Title: The Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell – Schubert: Symphony No. 9 (1970-2019/2019)
Genre: Classical
Format: MCH SACD ISO

The final recordings of George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra, “The Greats,” newly hybridized to SACD from the original domestic analog master tapes. Newly remastered. Featuring new liner notes. George Szell (1897-1970), who passed away in July 1970 shortly after his first visit to Japan for the Osaka Expo, recorded this “Great” performance—truly his swan song—alongside Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 and others for the old EMI label in April of that same year. It has now been revived on the latest SACD. Released as a commemorative LP that same year, this performance has long been cherished as a definitive recording evoking his former glory. Note: This is released as a commercially available SACD single-layer disc. For this reissue, a master digitally converted at 96kHz/24bit from the original UK master tapes was used, with separate new mastering for the SACD layer and CD layer. Features new liner notes. A permanent collection edition. The legendary recording by the Cleveland Orchestra arrives on SACD hybrid disc. While commercially available as a SACD single-layer disc, this marks its first release as an SACD hybrid disc. The previous stereo recording from 1957 also featured a solid structure and intricate dynamics, with particularly impressive agility in responding to the mood of the fourth movement. This new release further showcases a remarkable sense of stability stemming from the strength of their bond, along with a richly elevated musicality. Through the latest high-quality digital conversion and mastering, I believe you can sense an even more accomplished and splendid world created by both artists. Note that this recording occasionally exhibits noise originating from the master tape, some distortion, and techniques typical of recordings from that era. However, as always with our reissues, we respected the original master and aimed for mastering that prioritizes the texture of the instruments and the musicality. We hope you can appreciate the artistic vision of this historic masterpiece even more deeply. For this series, the SACD layer aims for extended high frequencies, soft nuances, high resolution, and a rich soundstage, while the CD layer strives for a cohesive, solid sound with a tangible, present-to-the-touch tonal quality. The CD itself possesses high potential; indeed, we encourage you to enjoy this as an SACD hybrid disc that allows you to savor the best of both formats. This 22nd installment of the Definition Series will release a total of three titles. <Production Notes> As noted in the accompanying booklet, during mastering we conducted thorough comparisons with previously released versions. We strived for optimal mastering that respects the original analog master tapes while maximizing the music’s potential. Generally, master tapes are raw material prior to final production. Their condition and quality vary significantly depending on the recording era, storage conditions, and the label’s approach to the master. Therefore, while the degree of processing differs, the fundamental principle for most cases is to apply only the absolute minimum necessary processing tailored to each final product format.。

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3 min read

SACD

Claudia Zannoni With Strings – Save Your Love For Me (2021) [Venus Japan] [SACD / Venus Records – VHGD-367]

adminSeptember 21, 2025 204 Views

Title: Claudia Zannoni With Strings – Save Your Love For Me (2021) [Venus Japan]
Genre: Jazz
Format: SACD ISO + DSF DSD64 + Hi-Res FLAC

Italian jazz vocalist Claudia Zannoni takes her inspiration from 1950s and ’60s jazz, and singers such as Nancy Wilson, Anita O’Day and Ella Fitzgerald. She has collaborated wtih Massimo Farao’, Phil Harper, Rodney Bradley, Davide Palladin, Danilo Memoli and many others. For this release she’s backed by a fantastic Arrigoni’s Strings Orchestra.

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1 min read

SACD

Claudia Zannoni – New Girl In Town (2020) [Japan 2021] [SACD / Venus Records – VHCD-1282]

adminSeptember 21, 2025 245 Views

Title: Claudia Zannoni – New Girl In Town (2020) [Japan 2021]
Genre: Jazz
Format: SACD ISO + DSF DSD64 + Hi-Res FLAC

Italian jazz vocalist Claudia Zannoni takes her inspiration from 1950s and ’60s jazz, and singers such as Nancy Wilson, Anita O’Day and Ella Fitzgerald. She has collaborated wtih Massimo Farao’, Phil Harper, Rodney Bradley, Davide Palladin, Danilo Memoli and many others. This set of songs draws from different worlds, that of standard American jazz, pop and Italian music. But there is something that unites them: the universal theme of love.

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1 min read

SACD

Claudio Chiara and Emanuele Cisi – People Time (2020) [Japan 2021] [SACD / Venus Records – VHGD-364]

adminSeptember 21, 2025 243 Views

Title: Claudio Chiara and Emanuele Cisi – People Time (2020) [Japan 2021]
Genre: Jazz
Format: SACD ISO + DSF DSD64 + Hi-Res FLAC

A beautiful and thrilling Italian jazz ballad session by alto saxophone player Claudio Chiara and tenor saxophone player Emanuele Sisi. A quartet and quintet performance with the two frontmen Claudio Chiara and Emanuele Sissi, plus the piano trio of Massimo Faraò/Nicola Barbon/Bobo Facchinetti. Recorded in February 2020 in Turin, Italy.

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SACD

Claudio Abbado, Wiener Philharmoniker – Brahms: 21 Ungarische Tänze – Hungarian Dances (1983) [Japan 2019] [SACD / Esoteric Company – ESSG-90200]

adminSeptember 21, 2025 265 Views

Title: Claudio Abbado, Wiener Philharmoniker – Brahms: 21 Ungarische Tänze – Hungarian Dances (1983) [Japan 2019]
Genre: Classical
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

At their best, and especially on home ground in central European repertory, Abbado and the Vienna Philharmonic could produce electrifying music-making, as on the present recording of Brahms’s Hungarian Dances made in Vienna’s Sofiensaal in 1982. The recording was commissioned as part of Deutsche Grammophon’s superb 8-volume, 62-LP “Brahms Edition”, a survey of the composer’s complete musical output which was released in 1983 to mark the 150th anniversary of Brahms’s birth. Gramophone magazine’s Robert Layton commended the warmth, eloquence and virtuosity of the Vienna Philharmonic’s playing, adding that, though Abbado was scrupulous in his observation of the letter of the score, “the spirit of what Brahms liked to refer to as his ‘genuine gypsy children’ is always in evidence”.

Johannes Brahms was 17 when he encountered the brilliant young Hungarian violinist Ede Reményi in Hamburg in 1850. Reményi was passing through the city to the United States after being deported from Hungary for his involvement in the 1848 uprising against the Austrians. Brahms was intoxicated by Reményi’s transcriptions of gypsy and Magyar folk songs and dan¬ces, a fascination that deepened in 1852 when the two men toured together. The two sets of Hungarian Dances which Brahms later published were not the only fruits of the experience. Throughout a composing career that spanned more then 40 years, Hungarian influences were never far from his music. Brahms wrote his Hungarian Dances for piano duet. Books 1 and 2 (nos. 1-10) were pub-lished in 1869, Books 3 and 4 in 1880. The 1880 set offers what might best be called original compositions in the Hungarian style rather than free arrangements of the kind of Reményi-derived material which Brahms had once taken to be authentic. The 1880 set was never quite as popular as the 1869, perhaps because Brahms was no longer interested in the previously all-pervasive csárdás. Yet such is the craftsmanship of the later dances, it is they, paradoxically, which have the stronger “gypsy” feel. The later set did have one admirer: Antonín Dvořák, who provided orchestrations of the last four dances, nos. 17-21.

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2 min read

SACD

Claudio Abbado, Chamber Orchestra Of Europe – Mozart: Don Giovanni (1998) [Reissue 2004] [SACD / Deutsche Grammophon – 00289 474 9962 GSA3]

adminSeptember 21, 2025 231 Views

Title: Claudio Abbado, Chamber Orchestra Of Europe – Mozart: Don Giovanni (1998) [Reissue 2004]
Genre: Classical
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Arguably the greatest opera ever written, the Mozart/Da Ponte depiction of the last twenty-four hours of the legendary libertine is performed here in the standard version combining the two versions Mozart prepared. Abbado offers modern instruments with certain nods to period performance practice–many appoggiaturas, comparatively fleet tempos, and some modest ornamentation.

This new Don Giovanni with Claudio Abbado conducting the Chamber Orchestra of Europe is Abbado’s second recording of a Mozart opera for Deutsche Grammophon. It was made in Ferrara in conjunction with performances of the opera early in 1997 with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. The cast features Bryn Terfel in one of his most famous stage roles as Leporello, singing alongside the young British baritone Simon Keenlyside as Don Giovanni. Terfel made his role debut as Leporello in the Patrice Chereau production of the opera in Salzburg. The Welsh singer’s performances of Leporello, together with Figaro, have been repeated highlights of the Salzburg Festival since then. No single adjective can encapsulate the power of Terfel’s stage presence in these roles. In addition to perfect singing and impeccable Italian in the recitatives, he brings the role of Leporello an ambiguous and sometimes menacing energy which threatens to subvert the traditional presuppositions of the master-servant relation. The cast is stronger on the male side but there are no weak links. The three baritones are especially strong. Keenlyside offers a sexy, dangerous Don. Terfel, completing his traversal of the three baritone roles, is a saturnine, bitter Leporello while D’Arcangelo is a Masetto to be reckoned with. Heilmann offers a sweet-toned Ottavio who nevertheless cannot manage the famous run without a breath. Salminen is a cavernous Commendatore. The women reverse the usual casting of Anna and Elvira, with Anna possessing the lighter voice. Isokowski is a powerful Elvira, a woman to be taken very seriously. Once the ear adjusts to the lack of steel, Reminfio is a fine Anna, like Callas and Moser phrasing the reprise of “Non mi dir” in a single span. Pace is a conventional Zerlina countering the recent trend to cast her as a mezzo.

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2 min read

SACD

Claudio Abbado, Berliner Philharmoniker – Brahms: The 4 Symphonies (Esoteric Japan 2018) [SACD / Esoteric Company – ESSG-90192/4]

adminSeptember 21, 2025 268 Views

Title: Claudio Abbado, Berliner Philharmoniker – Brahms: The 4 Symphonies (Esoteric Japan 2018)
Genre: Classical
Format: SACD ISO + DSF DSD64 + Hi-Res FLAC

For collectors of Claudio Abbado’s recordings, the performances on this three-discs Japanese Esoteric label’s remastered release of the Italian conductor’s digital recordings of Brahms’ symphonies with the Berliner Philharmoniker may seem redundant, since the symphonies were previously released as single discs in the late ’80s and early ’90s on Deutsche Grammophon. But this box set marks the first hybrid SACD release of historical recording selections. These new audio versions feature Esoteric’s proprietary re-mastering process to achieve the highest level of sound quality.

These performances are technically impeccable; Abbado is a tremendously skillful conductor who knows these scores like the back of his hand, and the Berliner Philharmoniker is one of the two or three finest orchestras in Europe, with a collective virtuosity that no other orchestra on the planet can match. The performances are also interpretively irreproachable. Some might find Abbado a bit stiff – there’s no tempo bending here – but even they would have to admit that there is nothing in Abbado’s accounts that does not come directly out of the score: his First’s resolute heroism, his Second’s dappled lyricism, his Third’s sensual romanticism, and his Fourth’s unrelenting tragedy are all rooted in the music, not in Abbado’s personal psychology. This set is additionally worthwhile because the single-movement works are as well-played and interpreted as the symphonies, particularly the choral works Nänie and Gesang der Parzen. Deutsche Grammophon’s digital sound was crisp, clear, and vivid, and Musical Heritage Society’s reissues are identical. If you’re looking for a single set of digitally recorded Brahms orchestral works, this set cannot be bettered.

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