16 Picks from 100 of DECCA’s Finest Hi-Res & SACD Releases

Today I want to introduce the limited-time sale on DECCA classical hi-res releases currently running on e-onkyo music. Some old PHILIPS titles are included as well. Plenty of albums at less than half price♪

100 Treasured Titles from the DECCA Label — Limited-Time Price Drop!

There are still just under two months left before the sale ends, but over the past few days I’ve been sitting here writing blog posts and listening to the sample tracks for almost all 100 titles (excluding ones I already own). Having whittled things down to titles I’d actually want for myself, I ended up with the following 16. As usual, I’m going in with the reckless premise of having heard nothing beyond the preview samples, so here comes another thoroughly unhinged set of reviews.

Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No.1; Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No.3 Behzod Abduraimov　★★★

Recorded 2013. Who on earth is this? — well, Behzod Abduraimov is an Uzbek pianist who came up without going through the orthodox Russian academy system. He’s Muslim, apparently… though his playing does sound rather Russian. He apparently made his name by winning the London International Piano Competition in 2009. Judging by this sample, he’s the full-throttle, youthful type — invigorating stuff. With Prokofiev I can’t be doing with pianists who have no sense of rhythm, but this one is good.

Field: Complete Nocturnes　Elizabeth Joy Roe　★★★

Recorded 2015. Elizabeth Joy Roe — another one I hadn’t heard of, a Korean-American Juilliard graduate. Looks like a debut album. The cover is the usual glamorous-photo classical idol treatment, I suppose. The content, though, is Field’s complete Nocturnes — not Chopin, and not something many pianists record. For me personally, I don’t think I’ve come across a recording of these since Ewa Pobłocka’s John Field: Complete Nocturnes… I should have nearly all of Pobłocka’s CDs recorded for Canyon and Victor, but when I went hunting through the shelves to compare, they were nowhere to be found. My preference, without even needing to listen side by side, would naturally be Pobłocka’s interpretation — but from the sample, this one feels more straightforwardly faithful to the score, more unaffected. And yet the recording quality is so good it draws you right in. Ah — I mean “good” in the DECCA sense of the word♪

Bach Concertos Janine Jansen　★★★

Recorded 2013. I remember writing disparagingly about Janine Jansen’s SACD of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in a past post — there was something too calculated and frankly a bit crude about the way the period-instrument flavour was being played up — but this Bach is fresh and I think it’s rather good. There’s so much dull playing out there that something like this feels like a breath of fresh air♪

Sarasate Julia Fischer, Milana Chernyavska　★

Recorded 2013. A collection of Sarasate violin pieces. I seem to have ended up with quite a few of Julia Fischer’s SACDs on Pentatone, but she strikes me as a rather neat, tidy sort of player — skilful in a compact way — and I think her standing is genuinely a bit ambiguous. That said, her playing is approachable and easy to listen to. She also bills herself as a pianist… but frankly, on that front, she’s simply not very good.

Alleluia Julia Lezhneva　★★

Recorded 2012. Julia Lezhneva, the round-faced Siberian soprano. This is her first album for DECCA. I think I prefer the second album below, both sonically and in terms of repertoire.

Handel: Arias　Julia Lezhneva, Il Giardino Armonico, Giovanni Antonini　★★★

Recorded 2015. I’m the sort of person who obsessively collects Philippe Jaroussky CDs, so naturally Julia Lezhneva has my full attention as well. Not a hint of operatic posturing — just this naturally, almost casually gifted young woman who turns out to be extraordinarily good. The Russian musical world really is terrifying in what it produces.

Brahms: The Violin Sonatas　Leonidas Kavakos, Yuja Wang　★★

Recorded 2013. More than Leonidas Kavakos’s violin, I’d actually urge you to listen to Yuja Wang’s piano — she’s always doing something unpredictable, and there are moments where you think, hang on, is she taking the mickey? But it’s so enjoyable you can’t help forgiving her.

Schumann: Liederkreis, Frauenliebe und -leben / Berg: Sieben frühe Lieder　Dorothea Röschmann, Mitsuko Uchida　★★

Recorded 2015. This is the one that won the 2016 Grammy Award. There was a fuss in Japan — people who didn’t quite know the full story going on about Mitsuko Uchida winning her second Grammy — but she is the accompanist here, accompanying Dorothea Röschmann♪

That said, the ineffable atmosphere of the whole thing does belong to Uchida-sensei. I ordered an import CD from TOWER RECORDS to write about the Grammy win, and it still hasn’t arrived. And I have absolutely no intention of buying the Japanese domestic pressing. Also — as with the Mozart piano concertos before this — I genuinely cannot fathom what the Grammy criteria are. Is it that cool, refined air that appeals to America’s cultural elite? Ever since PHILIPS became DECCA, there’s been a drop in the colour and warmth of the ambient sound — the indirect sound in the background — and it leaves me feeling that this somehow isn’t quite the right sonic palette for Schumann.

Mozart: Sonatas For Piano & Violin Mitsuko Uchida, Mark Steinberg　★★★

Recorded 2004. Originally released as an SACD, now out of print. When it comes to Uchida as an accompanist, I prefer this one — no contest. The tone has that traditional velvet touch, and it’s the warm, old-school PHILIPS sound at its finest.

Chopin: Piano Concerto No.2; Ballade No.4; Berceuse; Polonaise Heroique　Nelson Freire, Gurzenich-Orchester　★★★

Recorded 2013. I’m inexplicably fond of that sardonic old man’s face on the cover. Nelson Freire might be dismissed in some quarters as nothing more than an ageing pianist of questionable standing, but that’s precisely why — for Chopin — a personality like this fits so well, I think. Whether the playing is technically accomplished or not hardly matters; what counts is the unhurried, conversational way he shapes the music, never overdone, never cloying. This Chopin in particular I find very good.

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No.5 – "Emperor"; Piano Sonata No.32 in C Minor, Op.111 Nelson Freire, Riccardo Chailly　★★

Nelson Freire’s Emperor, recorded 2014. In keeping with the Chopin, the playing is relaxed and unhurried, and that works here too. Riccardo Chailly conducting the Emperor makes for a fine recording as well. As for the Sonata No. 32, the sample alone tells me almost nothing. Those who want their Beethoven forceful and driven should probably look elsewhere.

Homecoming – A Scottish Fantasy Nicola Benedetti　★

Recorded 2014. I try to collect Nicola Benedetti’s CDs as much as I can, and this one is rather interesting — all sorts of Scottish folk music woven through it. It has a certain quality for anyone drawn to what one might call the quintessentially British. The sound quality too is not the sharp, outline-heavy clarity you associate with DECCA, but more of a Naim Audio kind of sound.

Strauss, R.: Alpine Symphony　Saito Kinen Orchestra, Daniel Harding　★★

Recorded in 2012 while Seiji Ozawa was convalescing — the Saito Kinen Orchestra under the young Daniel Harding, performing Richard Strauss’s Alpine Symphony. A chaotic, bewildering density of sound. The only thing is, to my ears it simply doesn’t sound like the air of the German Alps — more like the Northern Alps of Nagano Prefecture, if anything.

Valentina Lisitsa Plays Philip Glass　★

Recorded 2014. I’ve quietly been collecting Lisitsa’s CDs as well, and the sound she produces matches her appearance exactly. There’s a certain rod-like directness to her playing that faintly recalls Horowitz, but leaving technique aside, I think her musical expressiveness is somewhat overrated. She looks spectacular when she’s playing flat out, and she’s a model-beautiful woman, hence enormously popular. Her most commercially successful album — the etudes — has recording distortion that makes it rather hard to sit through. Philip Glass isn’t classical music, but it suits her musical sensibility rather well. If it weren’t for Lisitsa, I don’t think I would ever willingly pick up a two-disc Philip Glass CD, so this is a convenient opportunity. Though I should say — I suffer from depression, and listening to this I could feel myself sinking rapidly into a dark place. As for Scriabin – Nuances, the question of whether it stands up against Ashkenazy’s Scriabin — well, Ashkenazy’s is better, I’d say.

Towards the Flame — Ashkenazy Plays Scriabin　★★

Recorded 2014. The 100 titles in this sale include a fair number of Ashkenazy albums, but for older recordings that can already be had cheaply, there’s not much point downloading them in hi-res all over again — if you’re going to the trouble of downloading to a PC audio setup, I’d say go for the newer digital recordings. That said, this particular disc does leave me feeling that in his later years there has been some degree of musical decline. The cool detachment and tension of his younger performances are not really present in this Scriabin. Even so, among this selection the Scriabin disc is reasonably good on both recording and performance fronts.

Bach, J.S.: Italian Concerto; French Overture; Aria Variata Vladimir Ashkenazy　★★★

Recorded 2013. To be honest, I had misgivings about Ashkenazy turning to Bach at this late stage in his career, and the playing itself… what is this? There’s something about the rhythmic approach — every phrase lands with this sticky, adhesive thud, like the keys have been coated in glue — that gives rise to about five question marks on a purely visceral level. And yet, if you keep listening without overthinking it, it somehow gets under your skin; the bright tone and the clean DECCA recording work in its favour, and before I knew it I’d been entirely won over.

Following the Well-Tempered Clavier and the Partitas, this feels like it may be for those willing to give his Bach a chance on its own terms — but in various senses, there is something about hearing this very modern Jewish artist play the Lutheran Protestant Bach (make of that what you will) that has me on the verge of some kind of gestalt collapse… in a good way, of course (mysterious).

～ Summary ～

16 titles in all. I’ll say it once more: for the majority of these albums, my impressions are based on nothing but the sample clips on e-onkyo music, so it’s entirely possible you’ll find the actual album quite different from what I’ve written here — I take no responsibility for the substance of these reviews.

If I were to put it plainly: the serious, respectable classical masterpieces can be left to the intellectually high-minded and properly orthodox — my selection is guided by the theme of high-quality sound that’s simply enjoyable to listen to♪. Hi-res files, unless you set up a network audio system, inevitably chain you to the PC on your desk, so ideally you want something that works well as background listening in a compact desktop environment.

I have not selected early digital recordings, or historic recordings made in the analogue era — “legendary” or otherwise. I’m not particularly fond of digitally remastered releases; I tend to feel that unless something was recorded digitally — ideally as a native hi-res recording — there’s little point listening to it in hi-res. 1-bit, 16-bit, 18-bit, and 20-bit recordings from the 1980s and ’90s dressed up with some dubious D/D conversion and heavy cosmetic processing — I find my body rejects those more often than not. Hi-res transfers made directly from analogue master tapes of the pre-1970s era can be worthwhile, but that depends entirely on the sensitivity of the recording engineer, and there’s a great deal involved in terms of noise handling and so on.

Sound quality aside, the atmosphere and tonal character of that era tend to feel richer and more present on the original records or first-pressing CDs — even through all the noise — so in the end it comes down to what you actually want to hear from a given performance. But my own view of hi-res is this: the most natural and least forced way to enjoy it is simply to take recordings made from the 2000s onwards in 24-bit/96kHz or DSD or higher, and savour them for their quality and freshness♪ — or so I’ve come to think.

The star ratings are a provisional ranking within the 16 titles I wanted from the 100 on offer. As it turns out, they’re almost all recent recordings, including performers I’d never heard of before. Titles that didn’t make the list were excluded either because they fell into the older classic recordings or D/D digital remaster category, or because the author already owns them, or the samples didn’t click, or there wasn’t enough enthusiasm to revisit them in hi-res, or simply because there was no interest at all♪

～ And on that note, farewell for now ～