Yuja Wang, Gustavo Dudamel & Los Angeles Philharmonic Rachmaninoff: The Piano Concertos & Paganini Rhapsody (2 UHQCD)

On the occasion of Rachmaninoff's 150th birthday in 1923, pianist Yuja Wang played all four of the composer's piano concertos as well as the "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini" with the Los Angeles Philharmonic; the conductor was Gustavo Dudamel, with whom Wang had already worked intensively. The sold-out and critically acclaimed performances took place at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the city where Rachmaninoff spent the last months of his life. The concertos were first released by Deutsche Grammophon and are now available through Universal Japan in audiophile pressing.
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.

Selections:

CD 1
Piano Concerto No.1 in F sharp minor, Op.1
1. I. Vivace – Moderato - Vivace
2. II. Andante
3. III. Allegro vivace
Piano Concerto No.4 in G minor, Op.40
4. I. Allegro vivace
5. II. Largo
6. III. Allegro vivace
7. Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op.43
CD 2
Piano Concerto No.2 in C minor, Op.18
1. I. Moderato
2. II. Adagio sostenuto
3. III. Allegro scherzando
Piano Concerto No.3 in D minor, Op.30
4. I. Allegro ma non tanto
5. II. Intermezzo. Adagio
6. III. Final. Alla breve