Helene Grimaud For Clara: Works by Schumann & Brahms UHQCD

Numbered, Limited Edition UHQCD!
Playable on any CD player, the Ultimate High Quality CD greatly surpasses all previous CDs before it!
On her 2023 album, pianist Hélène Grimaud explores the rich universe of German Romanticism, combining Robert Schumann's Kreisleriana op. 16 with Brahms' Intermezzi Op.117 and Lieder und Gesängen Op.32. Grimaud has known Schumann's Kreisleriana for most of her life. "You can spend a lifetime with a piece like this and always discover something new," the pianist says. Her special relationship with the German Romantics is evident on her album For Clara, which focuses not only on the pianist's relationship with the music of Robert Schumann and his protégé Brahms, but in particular on the two composers' connection to Clara Schumann.
With "For Clara", pianist Hélène Grimaud pays homage to the German Romantics Schumann and Brahms as well as their connection to Schumann's wife Clara. The "Kreisleriana", composed in 1883, knows Grimaud like the back of her hand and is nevertheless happy to "always discover something new". The pianist is strongly supported by baritone Konstantin Krimmel, and BBC Music Magazine praises the "sovereign and unaffected performance of this beautiful, dreamlike music".
Grimaud recorded Brahms' Songs and Cantos Op.32 with baritone Konstantin Krimmel, who was already her musical partner on the album Silent Songs, about which BBC Music Magazine wrote: "Konstantin Krimmel and Hélène Grimaud deserve the highest praise for their confident and unaffected performance of this beautiful, dreamlike music." Together, Grimaud and Krimmel movingly convey the themes of love, loss, devotion, and disillusionment, expressed in both words and music.
UHQCD stands for Ultimate High Quality Compact Disc and is a joint development of the Japanese CD replication company Memory-Tech and the Audio Quality CD Company from Hong Kong. Unlike conventional CDs, UHQCDs are not pressed from polycarbonate, but cast from a photopolymer and cured with UV light. To protect the softer photopolymer from scratches, another layer of high-purity polycarbonate is applied. The combination results in a significantly reduced reflection of the laser light inside the CD and an unrivalled precise edge transition between the pits and lands of the CD. UHQCDs are 100% compatible with normal CD players. Musically, the sound is strongly reminiscent of analogue master tapes.
The discs offered by Universal Japan are additionally encoded MQA (Master Quality Authenticated). If you output the digital signal from the digital output of your CD player or the previously ripped data stream of your music server to a corresponding MQA-DA converter, you can generate a 24-bit signal with up to 352 kHz sampling frequency from the CD data.
While Universal Music Japan's first UHQCD series used the DSD data from previous SHM-SACD releases, as their popularity grew, albums that had not previously been released as SHM-SACDs were released. Typically, the master tapes of the Universal Archive are converted to DSD and then post-processed with the appropriate MQA encoder. Thus, the UHQCDs are ideal for music lovers who want to get as close as possible to the sound of the recording, but do not have a SACD player.
"Hélène Grimaud has recorded the work before, but she seems to have added intensity this time around. She is nervously excited in the faster virtuosic numbers, but sample No.4 to hear her marvelous control over the tonal instability that appears in many of these pieces....This is an important entry in Grimaud's catalog, with a Kreisleriana that is as fine as any." - James Manheim, AllMusic.com, 4.5/5 stars

Features:

• Numbered, Limited Edition
• Made in Japan
• Superior Crystal Sound
• Ultimate High Quality CD
• XRCD-Like Luxury Digipak
• Playable on conventional CD players

Musicians:

• Hélène Grimaud, piano
• Konstantin Krimmel, vocals (baritone)

Selections:

Robert Schumann (1810–1856)
Kreisleriana, Op.16
1. Extremely moved
2. Very intimately and not too quickly
3. Very excited
4. Very slow
5. Very lively
6. Very slow
7. Very fast
8. Fast and playful
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Intermezzi, Op.117
9. Andante moderato
10. Andante non troppo e con molto espressione
11. Andante con moto
Songs and chants, Op.32
12. How I pulled myself together in the night
13. Not going to you anymore
14. I'm sneaking around
15. The stream that noisy beside me
16. Woe betide you if you want me again
17. You say that I was mistaken
18. Bitter things to say, you think
19. This is how we stand, I and my pasture
20. What are you, my queen