In fact, I'm going to confine myself to just three selections this week. [EDIT: Given my disappointment with what I heard from the third selection (see below), it's really just TWO selections this week. Thank goodness for Aigul and Chloe!] All three of these albums are of the immersive Dolby Atmos persuasion:
 As predicted yesterday, all the tracks on this album are now available. In addition to the two tracks I heard yesterday, I also listened this morning to "The Nightingale", the folk song whose orchestration was described by MWI's Ralph Moore as comparable to that in some of Canteloube's "Songs of the Auvergne". He's right! It's a sonic bath of lushness! Thumbs up from me!
It's Chloe again! I raved about her Vivaldi Four Seasons a few months ago (with its interesting "Harmonic Labyrinth" Concerto by Locatelli included), and now she's got this strange coupling on offer. The Butterfly Lovers Concerto (originally attributed IIRC to the Chinese Composers Central Committee, although more recent attributions credit the work to just two composers: Chen Gang and Zhanhao He) is a piece I play with our local babe violinists every so often, and, without exception, the violinists and the parents always seem to be very proud of this music. (I just wish the piano reduction weren't so awkward!) And of course we've just had a post here on AA about a prodigy on YouTube playing the last movement of the Paganini Concerto amazingly well. Chloe is a bit older of course, but she plays the whole concerto - not just the last movement. And if you check the supplemental pictures I've added here, does Chloe really LOOK that much older? BTW, this release won't be available on Amazon until August 23.
 I don't know anything about the pianists here, but what could possibly make this recording interesting is the fact that they're playing on Steingraber "Phoenix" pianos. Here's the hard sell from Amazon: "these magnificent, handcrafted pianos are ideal for performing repertoire requiring extreme finesse and nuance of sound. Apart from their unusual appearance, as they were made in a warm blonde wood colour, the Steingraber Phoenix sounds very different from the usual, bright grand piano. Listeners will find, particularly in the higher register, the sound much more mellow and perhaps a little closer to that of a period instrument. [That's OK - as long as they don't sound like toy pianos or strung rubber bands, like most period "fortepianos"!] For the two-piano concertos by Mozart of this recording the result is striking: thanks to the less aggressive tone, many more details of Mozart's experimental two-piano writing come to the fore." UPDATE: I listened to the last movement of the Two-Piano Concerto, and the instruments do veer a bit too close to the HIP ideal for me. Moreover, the ECO, although using modern instruments as usual, has been restricted in its use of string vibrato. So this is a no-go for me, but if you like HIP (and you know who you are!), you might find this album attractive in ways which I don't. ;-)
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