While a whole generation of musicians seems to have adapted to nomadic composition, often between two dates in a plane or in a tour bus, there still are some that like the quality of studio production. Whatever the most-seasoned chamber producers may say, the surroundings are a major factor in the success of a recording (ask Ben Frost or Midori Takada). When other people release maxi CDs every two months, Nils Frahm, German virtuoso of the electric (or sometimes not) piano, took two years to imagine and build his “dream studio”. He put it in a place steeped in history, the Funkhaus Berlin, former headquarters of the East German public broadcasting that was transformed into a studio and concert hall facility. Nils Frahm has thus taken residence in Saal 3 to patiently build a pipe organ that you’ll hear emerging from the first tracks of the disc, like this profession of faith The Whole Universe Wants to Be Touched. With this seventh album which, track after track, makes us dive once again with delight into his oneiric—and almost subaquatic—world, the German pursues his quest for perfection, which he knows to be unreachable. “The music I hear inside me will never end up on a record, as it seems I can only play it for myself. This record includes what I think sticks out and describes my recent musical discoveries in the best possible way I could imagine.” We certainly want him to keep trying…© Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz

With this Mirare release, Liya Petrova takes a big step forward from among the crowd of young violinists who have emerged in the early 2020s. The title, Momentum [1], is questionable, but the term could certainly apply to Petrova's career. The repertory is bold. Few players at this stage of a career would have picked such little-known works for an album; William Walton's Violin Concerto, Op. 30, is much less common than his cello concerto, and the Violin Sonata in B minor of Ottorino Respighi is an uncharacteristic work that usually appears on recordings of the composer's complete works in the genre. The pairing seems arbitrary, but various connections emerge. Both pieces are linked to Jascha Heifetz; for Respighi's Sonata, he was the dedicatee, and he commissioned and championed the Walton and made its first recording. There is a warm, Italianate tinge to both works; Walton wrote his concerto mostly in Italy, and the tarantella rhythm in the second movement was inspired by his experience of having been bitten by a tarantula. Petrova is not a Heifetz clone, but her combination of steely confidence in virtuoso passages (sample that Presto capriccioso) with an ability to turn on the sentiment may bring that master to mind. She seizes the listener's attention right from the start in the Walton, with its arresting combination of clarinet and solo violin, and she gets excellent support from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Duncan Ward and from her usual duet partner, Adam Laloum, in the Respighi. A very exciting release. © James Manheim /TiVo

Thematic albums have become widespread, and often enjoy varying degrees of success. The pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, long known for his seriousness and exceptional musical talent, has chosen two crucial years of Mozart's output as the programme for this album and the one that is set to follow it. In 1785, Mozart was at the height of his genius. He had just been initiated into Freemasonry, which was then in vogue in Vienna; he had finished the 6 Quartets dedicated to his friend Haydn; he had begun composing the Marriage of Figaro and gave numerous "Academies", playing his own works on the piano. These productive times form the basis of Leif Ove Andsnes's project, which brings together three contemporary and very different concertos, from the dramatic D minor (n° 20, K. 466), to the luminous C major (n° 21, K. 467), and the most original (and longest at 23 minutes), the powerful E flat major (n° 22, K. 482). The prodigious year of 1785 also saw the creation of the Fantasia in C minor which seems to recall the teachings of the fickle Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, the Masonic Funeral Music in the same dark tone and the Quartet with piano in G minor, another key in which Mozart wrote some masterpieces. By turns a pianist, a chamber musician and a conductor, the distinguished musician Leif Ove Andsnes offers up an album that is as historically coherent as it is musically successful. © François Hudry/Qobuz

For Aimee Mann, the soundtrack to Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia was her first opportunity to release new material since 1995's I'm With Stupid. True, some of the songs are a few years old, but this is their first release, and each of her nine songs for the film seamlessly fit together, achieving a perfect blend of musical and lyrical tone. They feel like a miniature album, and while some of these tracks are on Bachelor No. 2, the way they flow and play off of each other makes Magnolia feel like a unique, individual work. Of course, it helps that Mann is at a peak in her craft, creating songs that are not only beautifully melodic, but musically and lyrically rich. Sonically, they're of a piece - even her cover of Nilsson's "One" fits perfectly -- but there's a lot of variety here, from the bouncy, irresistible "Momentum" to the gorgeously melancholic "Deathly." Mann has shined before, but never quite so consistently. It's easy to get lost in her music, which is why it comes as a bit of surprise to hear a gameshow bell ring at the conclusion of "Save Me," cleanly dividing Mann's songscore from the oldies that are also used in the film. Essentially, the two Supertramp songs ("Goodbye Stranger," "Logical Song"), Gabrielle's "Dreams," and Jon Brion's theme for the film act as a bonus EP after Mann's mini-LP. They don't sound out of place, but rather act as a reminder that Magnolia is not a proper Mann album, but a soundtrack. It's a testament to Mann's strengths as a songwriter and pop craftsman that during those first nine songs, it's hard to think of Magnolia as anything other than a Mann album, and her best one to date, at that.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

A guy who Miles Davis called his favorite piano player, Ahmad Jamal has always earned respect among other musicians and critics for his consistent and innovative five-decade career, but the general public has never celebrated him. Why is anybody's guess, except that he's never been one for self-promotion; he's always been too busy making music to talk about it much. This trio date, featuring the greatest soul-jazz drummer of all time -- Idris Muhammad -- and bassist James Cammack, is one of the most fiery and inspired of Jamal's career. Kicking it off with "In Search Of," Jamal's more percussive style is in evidence, kicking it with ninths and even elevenths in shifting time signatures in a modern version of something that unites McCoy Tyner's Coltrane period with the barrelhouse. Jamal's trademark dissonances are juxtaposed against his whimsical lyric side in "Should I," a tune he has played live for decades. His right-hand legato phrasing and a near Monk-ish sense of harmony highlight his cascading arpeggios and enormous chord voicings. And harmony is the central motif of this album. Jamal's sense of melodic and harmonic development is under-recognized, even as he has used both Ellington and Oscar Peterson for starting points and built upon them via Monk's engagement with rhythm and "wrong" notes. His chords are unique among jazz pianists in that they can be incorporated wholesale as part of a rhythmic attack or in single- or double-note clusters to swing the tune into its lyric. As a rhythm section, Muhammad and Cammack are perfectly suited to Jamal because the seemingly teetering shifts in time and pulse are never taken for granted and never merely followed, but executed according to the pianist's penchant for making his compositions swing in a songlike manner. A wonderful surprise here is the vocal of soul singer O.C. Smith on the Jamal/Aziza Miller tune "Whispering." Smith is best known as the singer of the soul hit "Little Green Apples," but his talent is far more diverse than that. Here are traces of Big Joe Williams, Lou Rawls, and Charles Brown caressed by the trio's shimmering accompaniment. His performance is flawless. While Jamal's compositions are the album's high points, there are no dead-dog tracks here at all: A reading of the Frank Loesser nugget "I've Never Been in Love Before" reflects in the trio's playing the vocal stylings of both Dinah Washington and Ella Fitzgerald. Also, Monty Alexander's "You Can See" is reinvented by the Jamal trio and comes off as a splashy, singing number suited for the stage as much as a jazz band. Jamal's ostinato and glissandi theatricality are dramatic but never showy. He punches the melodic invention in his solos and keeps the rhythm section moving, but never overshadows the body of the tune. This is a beautiful offering by one of the true jazz masters of our time. At 72, Jamal is even more of a pianistic enigma than he was as a young man. Highly recommended.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Extreme metal can certainly be a very technically demanding musical style, but not exactly to the level of say, Dream Theater. But on their 2009 release, Cosmogenesis, Obscura certainly approach the same complex heights as the aforementioned band. In other words, lots of sweep picking, finger-straining riffing, impeccable drumming, and bass being played like a lead guitar. The only thing that separates this German quartet from all the other technical metal bands on the scene is that they're fronted by a death metal growler, Steffen Kummerer. Take your pick of any of the album's ten tracks, and be prepared to be met head on with metal so complex that you may need a compass to navigate your way through it.© Greg Prato /TiVo