The album is available at NativeDSD in Stereo DSD 512, DSD 256, DSD 128, DSD 64 and DXD plus Auro3D FLAC and Dolby Atmos TrueHD, Auro3D and DTS:X Immersive Audio.

Leopold Godowsky visited Java on a journey through the Far East that began in Japan on October 13, 1922, and ended in Honolulu on May 25, 1923. A trip that took the pianist- composer to Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore, Java and the Philippines.

Japan and China only half pleased him; too crowded, too many people. Only in Java, which with forty million inhabitants he also found a tad too crowded, did he truly fall under the spell of Asia. Everything about the island charmed him. The princely cities of Solo (Surakarta) and Djokja (Yokyakarta), the cratons, the markets, sawas, volcanoes, the sunrise from the rim of the crater of the Bromo, the five hundred Buddha statues on the Borobudur, the wajang puppetry, the oldest district of Batavia, Kota Tua, the gardens of Buitenzorg. But what really overwhelmed him was that he found a highly refined culture that derived its eloquence from an instrument that, like the piano, is a percussion instrument: the gamelan.

In Java, Leopold Godowsky did not compose a note, but the gamelan music lingered in his ears for weeks, months, years, eventually resulting in his finest work, the Java Suite, fifty minutes of music that can be listened to like a travelogue.

Tobias Borsboom, Piano

The post Godowsky: Java Suite appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

1) The young alumnus of the Royal Conservatory of Ghent, Patricia Gil Jiminez was asked to write a work for clarinet and electronics. The piece is a top addition to the contemporary repertoire!

2) The Ghent composer Johan Duijck (former conductor of the “Flemish Radio Choir” and the “Choir of Saint Martins in the Fields”) was asked to create a new composition for the special combination of 3 clarinets, piano and large mixed choir.

3)Last but not least, the Flemish composer Erik Desimpelaere was commissioned for a concert work for clarinet and orchestra.

Julien Chun-Yen Lai
Martim Barbosa
Yebin Seo
Sabine Meyer
Reiner Wehle
Desguin Quartet
Zemlinsky Quartet
Ghents Madrigaalkoor
Panagiotis Marios Giannakas
Seoyoung Lee
Flanders Symphony Orchestra

The post International Clarinet Competition Ghent 2024 [Double Album] [Pure DSD] appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

The album is available at NativeDSD in Stereo DSD 512, DSD 256, DSD 128, DSD 64 and DXD plus Auro3D FLAC and Dolby Atmos TrueHD, Auro3D and DTS:X Immersive Audio.

These pieces tended to be ones that had a theatrical element in opera, ballet, or dance. The possibilities of arrangement enabled by guitar quartet add another dimension, either using the spectrum of timbral colors of the guitar like “an orchestra in miniature” (as the great Andrés Segovia used to say), or to expand the music of one piano between four guitarists to make a rich, sustaining sonority, unobtainable with fewer guitars.

We believe this collection of pieces pushes the boundaries of how guitar quartet can be used, but always in a way that best serves the storytelling, lyrical beauty, and often childlike wonder of these works.

Mēla Guitar Quartet
Matthew Robinson
George Tarlton
Michael Butten
Zahrah Hutton

The post Overtures and Dances appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

1035 is an exploration of both past and present, centered around a piece that is close to my heart—J.S. Bach’s Flute Sonata BWV 1035. Performed on the Keybird, a new lightweight acoustic “una corda” piano, this project breathes fresh life into the baroque sonata, blending modern interpretations, original compositions, and personal improvisations inspired by the master’s work.

What makes 1035 truly special is the integration of the Keybird’s MIDI capabilities, allowing me to connect and play two analog synthesizers directly through the instrument. This opens up an exciting realm of sonic possibilities, merging the organic warmth of an acoustic piano with the electronic textures of synthesizers. It’s a dynamic dialogue between the traditional and the contemporary, where acoustic sound meets modernity.

The album was recorded in the Westerkerk in Enkhuizen, a medieval church with stunning acoustics that add a sacred, resonant quality to each note. The church’s atmosphere allows the music to unfold naturally, enhancing both the delicate tones of the Keybird and the spacious textures of the synthesizers. It’s a setting that beautifully amplifies the blend of ancient and modern that runs through the heart of this album.

In 1035, I explore new frontiers of classical music through an innovative instrument. This journey uncovers the surprising ways in which music from centuries past can blend with modern technology, giving Bach’s sonata a fresh perspective while maintaining its timeless beauty.

Kristján Martinsson, Piano 

The post 1035 appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

The celebration of Yule in Northern Europe harks back to a transition from ancient Pagan Germanic culture to the more formal spirituality of the newer Christian rite. Christmas, as we mostly now call it, gave us hymns, processions and chants, and in between, silence in church. Yule meant a vibrant pre-Christian secularity, with feasting and dancing, the noise of instruments and decorating the house with holly, ivy and mistletoe as a tribute to the gods of earth and air.

Much of the music on this album dates from an earlier time when in a throwback to Yule churches were decorated with Christmas greenery, and at home there would be carols sung round a burning Yule log, the two traditions side by side. But the songs on this album are contemporary performances, a matrix where immaculate a cappella voices meet improvising instruments in a synthesis of secular and sacred. There’s no knowing how the earliest Christmas songs were created, but the first ones must have been passed on orally until someone wrote them down. Writing, then later printing, set the songs free, and some travelled all over Europe, adopted by singers who then made their own versions. New songs were made, but many ancient ones survived the centuries, each new performer passing on their own memories of a song to the next generation. Alongside this oral tradition more formal manuscript collections were created in church and cloister as clerics composed new chants for their own communities.

These historical processes are intertwined throughout this album, which is very much a product of the Trio Mediæval aesthetic; there are medieval compositions from England, arrangements of North European music by Tone Krohn, Anders Jormin and by trio members Anna Maria Friman, Linn Andrea Fuglseth and Jorunn Lovise Husan, together with a new composition by Norway’s English composer Andrew Smith.

Trio Mediæval
Sinikka Langeland, Kantele
Vegar Vårdal,  Hardanger, Fiddle & Violin
Arve Henriksen, Trumpet & Organ
Anders Jormin, Double Bass
Helge Norbakken, Percussion

The post YULE appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

Advent and Christmas are for many people a time for light and hope and warmth. Yet the world around us is cold and turbulent. Wars are being fought. People are fleeing from their homes. Children are dying. Thousands of people lack food and medicine. Our prayers are for peace. We sing “Beautiful is our Earth! Glorious is God’s heaven!” as a protest song for peace and justice, the world being unjust.

During Advent many of us are fond of the familiar and much-loved Christmas carols as we remember them from our childhood, and as they have been sung for generations. There are carols in these traditional arrangements on this album, but there are others in completely new arrangements, made specially for Uranienborg Vokalensemble and for this recording.

Christmas can be a festival that intensifies our feelings – what is good seems even better, and what hurts feels even more painful. Perhaps we have lost someone close to us: can we then sing “Oh, Christmas, so cheerful”? We know that there are people who look forward to Christmas but at the same time dread it, and we believe that Kjetil Bjerkestrand’s arrangement brings out this element of equivocation and irony. The birth of Jesus – this is the message of Christmas! – a birth that changed the world for ever. May your Christmas be peaceful!

Uranienborg Vokalensemble
Elisabeth Holte, Conductor
Kjetil Bjerkestrand and Øystein Moen, Synthesizers & Samplers
Torun Torbo, Flute
Henriette Viktoria Eide Skagen, Organ

The post Fred Over Jorden (Peace To The World) appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

The voice guides you quickly around the sphere. Then each channel play a range of sinus tones to verify level and bandwidth of reproduction. These test tones also serve to check transparency and properties of the codecs, including fold-down and headphone virtualization.

The tones start at 30Hz and ascend in octaves: 30 – 60 – 120 – 240 – 480 – 960 – 1.920 – 3.840 – 7.680 – 15.360

Channel order within interleaved WAV:
1: L
2: R
3: C
4: Lfe
5: Ls (side/surround)
6: Rs (side/surround)
7: Lrs (rear/back)
8: Rrs (rear/back)
9: Ltf (height front)
10: Rtf (height front)
11: Ltr (height rear)
12: Rtr (height rear)

If your immersive speaker layout is 5.1.4 then please omit/mute channel 5 and 6 from these files. If your immersive speaker layout is 5.1.2 then please also omit/mute channel 11 and 12 from these files.

NOTICE: For the time being, Dolby Atmos MKV dowloads are provided as direct download dropbox links and are not available for download through the downloader app. The download link will be supplied at checkout.

The post 2L Immersive Channel Identification 7.1.4 Test Files (Dolby Atmos TrueHD & Auro3D) appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

This is the album’s debut in Stereo and 5.1 Channel Surround Sound DSD 256, DSD 128, DSD 64 and DXD, Stereo DSD 512, and 7.1.4 Channel Auro3D and Dolby Atmos TrueHD MKV Immersive Surround Sound at NativeDSD!

With arrangements by pianist Alan Broadbent, the sublime ballads album finds the Swiss trumpet legend and his Jazz ensemble addressing such Jazz classics as Mal Waldron’s “Soul Eyes,” Charlie Haden’s “Nightfall,” Les Alrich’s melodic and mellow “Old Friends”.

The album also features J. Russel Robinson’s “Portrait of Jennie,” a tune originally written for a 1948 movie of the same name and which became a hit song later that year for Nat King Cole before being covered by J.J. Johnson, George Shearing, Blue Mitchell, Red Garland, Oscar Peterson and Wes Montgomery. It was even included on Clifford Brown with Strings, the 1955 album that ignited Ambrosetti’s youthful ambition to pursue Jazz.

Franco Ambrosetti, Flugelhorn
Alan Broadbent, Piano, Arrangements & Conductor
John Scofield, Guitar
Peter Erskine, Drums
Scott Colley, Bass
Sara Caswell, Violin & Concertmaster

Note: For the time being, Dolby Atmos MKV downloads are provided as direct download Dropbox links and are not available for download through the downloader app. The download link will be supplied at checkout.

The post Sweet Caress appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

My journey with this album began during a challenging period, but it turned out to be an incredible experience.

While I was in the hospital for heart surgery, I started listening to Beethoven’s Pathétique Sonata, performed by Barenboim. It lifted my spirits and sparked a thought – wouldn’t it be wonderful to spread happiness through music?

That’s when I began dreaming of becoming a concert pianist.

Liam Nassereddine, Piano

The post Luminescence appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

The inner strength of this album is the progression from minor to major. With our instruments we speak about contrasts between loss and comfort, captivity and freedom, injustice and honesty, sarcasm and humor, drama, and love.

Sasha Witteveen, Double Bass
Jorian van Nee, Piano [Tracks 1, 3, 11]
Jose David Ospina Gaviria, Double Bass [Tracks 4-10]

The post Into the Light appeared first on NativeDSD Music.