Audiophile Hi-Res System Test is a must for every audiophile. This album is of particular interest for audiophiles and for anyone wishing to calibrate their precious sound system and speaker placement.

This is a great Setup and Test recording from 2xHD Mastering, packed with expertly chosen music cuts, test tones, instrument resonances, stage perspectives, noises and a system burn-in track, in DSD, to help properly set up and enhance your system.

It is a must have tool to help tweak your system for maximum performance. Also includes over 57 minutes of audiophile music.

Arne Domnerus, Bengt Hallberg, Egil Johansen, Georg Riedel & Lars Erstrand (Track 2)
Forestare Ensemble (Track 3)
Holly Cole (Track 5)
Yael Brandeis, Narrator

Note: Have you already purchased this album in the past, but want the newly re-mastered versions directly from the DXD edit master? Simply locate the album in your NativeDSD Downloader, download the tracks again, and enjoy!

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It is Exclusively Available in Stereo DSD 512 and DSD 256 at NativeDSD Music.

The privilege of having an art gallery as a rehearsal space, being surrounded by works of painters and sculptors such as David Altmejd, David Spriggs, Marc Séguin, Armand Vaillancourt, Ugo Rondinone amongst the many others in the private collection of l’Arsenal de Montreal where Forestare has been in residence since 2014, inspired our group to do something innovative.

Founded in 2002 the group, which consists of 12 Guitars, 2 Double Basses and occasionally some percussion, specialized principally in playing and creating music of our time and arranging popular music. The beauty of the fine art which surrounds us in this temple for the visual arts gave us the impetus to record paradoxically an album of baroque music, with the unusual modern twist of performing it with our particular formation. This was a new direction for the group; an opportunity to explore this immense body of immortal music’s abundance of masterpieces, and to introduce this important period to a new audience.

The recording took place at the Église St-Augustin in Mirabel, a church known for its fine acoustics. Three Schoeps M-22 omnidirectional microphones were used (The Decca tree), wired to a tube preamplifier which was connected directly to an MSB Platinum A/D converter with a 192kHz/24 bit resolution. The recorder was a Nagra Seven, powered by Nagra MPS batteries. All inter-connect were Siltech silver cables.

Forestare
Dave Pilon, Conductor & Arranger

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Clear Day is the 11th album by Canadian Jazz Vocalist Emilie-Claire Barlow. It features the Dutch Jazz and Pop Orchestra Metropole Orkest conducted by Jules Buckley. It won the Juno Award for Vocal Jazz Album of the Year in 2016.

Clear Day is a “mélange of folk and rock staples” with songs by “artists spanning all genres and time periods, from Brad Mehldau to Coldplay.” The album is a narrative with each song telling part of her personal story. Featuring favorites like On A Clear Day You Can See Forever (the title song), The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy) and Sweet Thing.

“Each song represents my state of mind, a turning point, a crossroad. The important thing was that the song needed to convey that particular moment in time.” The album also features the 70-piece Metropole Orkest, expanded from the usual 52 piece line up.

The album was produced and arranged by Barlow and Bassist Steve Webster with orchestration by the duo as well as three orchestrations by Shelly Berger and two orchestrations by John Metcalfe, the arranger for Peter Gabriel’s New Blood Orchestra.

Emilie-Claire Barlow, Vocals
Metropole Orkest
Jules Buckley, Conductor

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“I am happy that the Dutch TV company VPRO made a documentary of our recording of this great symphony. This film is available on the internet. [YouTube/Mahler 7/Iván Fischer] It documents my efforts in proving that the last movement of Mahler’s seventh symphony – despite some doubts of Mahler experts – is a masterpiece. This work is often seen as enigmatic, fragmented, less accessible than the other, beloved Mahler Symphonies. May this recording contribute to a revalidation!

Mahler returns here to a perfect balance. He ended the 6th Symphony in a tragic minor key. Here he offers us the full journey from darkness to light. And what a journey it is! Please note the most magnificent scherzo framed between the two unique night music episodes! I love this symphony.”

– Iván Fischer

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While they were penned before he was even out of his teens, the music of Mozart’s violin concertos is as characteristically elegant and uplifting as anything he would ever write. Znaider teases out the wit and charm in these delightful pieces, leading the virtuoso players of the London Symphony Orchestra as Mozart would have done, from the violin.

Nikolaj Znaider, Violin Soloist & Conductor
London Symphony Orchestra

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‘When we played the Hungarian Dance no. 3 by Brahms I realised that I usually play this music, or its direct source, as the repertoire of a particular region of Transylvania known as Szék/Sic* csárdás. Szék/Sic is a Hungarian village in Transylvania; the csárdás, typical of this region, is played in the middle of a lengthy dancing scheme or suite lasting up to 40-50 minutes, besides various other csárdás melodies. Even today the people of Szék/Sic enjoy listening to this music during holidays and weekend gatherings; it consists mainly of folk songs, and the villagers like to sing along to them.’
István Kádár, violin

*‘Szék’ is the Hungarian and ‘Sic’ is the Rumanian name of the village.

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The nineteenth century was a golden age for choral singing. A European chorister looking for a corner in vocal heaven would have been well advised to buy a one-way ticket to Germany or Austria: more specifically, to Berlin, Leipzig, Frankfurt, Cologne, or Vienna. Beginning in 1810, singing clubs, and later on, choral societies, shot up all over this part of the world like mushrooms. You could join a Liedertafel, Liederkranz, or Männersangverein.

Carl Friedrich Zelter, Mendelssohn’s teacher and the leader of the Berliner Singverein, was the first person to use the term “Liedertafel” in 1808. The term was used to indicate an informal meeting of poets, composers, and singers who came together to sing German part-songs. In a letter addressed to Goethe, Zelter explained that the 25 members of his Liedertafel were accustomed to sit down at a well-furnished table for a sumptuous dinner followed by an evening of singing. Zelter’s group preferred original works, so freshly composed that the ink was still wet. The best musical contribution was then duly rewarded with a medal, a congratulatory toast, or a laurel wreath. Behind this convivial atmosphere there was a loftier goal: the stimulation and promotion of German poetry and music. A Liedertafel, in other words, could be seen as occupying a place comparable to the Meistersingers’ guild of the middle ages, or the eighteenth-century musical meetings of the Freemasons.

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Coming between two of Beethoven’s most famous symphonies the Fourth Symphony can seem a relatively lightweight and cheerful work. Written for Count Franz von Oppersdorff, who wanted a symphony similar in vein to the Second Symphony it is a brusque and enjoyable work.

Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony sees him in playful mood. Featuring humorous twists and turns and relatively brief movements, including the shortest movement of any of his symphonies, it is a lighthearted work.

The Fourth Symphony is probably Beethoven’s least well-known, a situation which no doubt owes much to its position sandwiched between the Third (the ’Eroica’) – at that time the largest and most complex symphony ever composed – and the viscerally powerful and uplifting Fifth. Beside these two great forward steps in symphonic thinking, the brusque Fourth can seem dwarfed, its relatively lightweight frame and predominantly cheerful nature apparently offering no equivalent to either their massive presences or their mighty extra-musical messages.

But it is a thoroughly Beethovenian work nevertheless, taut with muscular strength, propelled with unstoppable momentum, and shot through with its composer’s unmistakable stylistic fingerprints. Produced in the same year as the Violin Concerto, the Fourth Piano Concerto and the three ’Razumovsky’ string quartets, it purrs with the mature assurance of Beethoven’s so-called ’middle-period’ compositions, and, like several of those, is among his most lovable and appealing creations.

London Symphony Orchestra
Bernard Haitink, Conductor

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