With this recording, the Latvian conductor and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra are continuing their celebrated Bruckner cycle. “Bruckner formulated everything in this symphony with the utmost clarity: the wonderful themes are clearly separated from one another by general pauses, and yet a large whole emerges. It is astonishing that this work is played so seldom – actually it is an ideal introduction to the Cosmos of Bruckner’s Symphony ”, says Gewandhauskapellmeister Andris Nelsons about the Second Symphony. He composed his Second Symphony between the autumn of 1871 and 1872 after the“ bold ”First (also in C minor) and the“ canceled ”D minor symphony – which is actually his third.
Bruckner himself called his eighth a “mystery”. Andris Nelsons can gain a lot from this: “Here, especially in the slow movement, Bruckner penetrated regions that other composers could not reach. The coherence of the gigantic work is also a miracle. The grandiose final movement in particular contributes to this – the last, which Bruckner could complete. “
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 rather cast from a photopolymer and cured with UV light. Another layer of high-purity polycarbonate is applied to protect the softer photopolymer from scratching. The combination results in a significantly reduced reflection of the laser light inside the CD and an unmatched precise edge transition between pits and lands of the CD. UHQCDs are 100% compatible with normal CD players. Musically, the result is a sound that is strongly reminiscent of analog master tapes.
The discs offered by Universal Japan are also MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) encoded. Anyone who outputs the digital signal from the digital output of their CD player or the previously ripped data stream from their music server to a corresponding MQA-DA converter can generate a 24-bit signal with a sampling frequency of up to 352 kHz from the CD data.
