The first time Daniel Barenboim saw Lisa Batiashvili on a television broadcast of the Sibelius Violin Concerto, it was immediately clear to him that one day he would perform this concerto with her. In 2016 the time had come – Barenboim and Batiashvili performed the concert together in front of 40,000 listeners in Berlin. With the technically extremely demanding piece by Sibelius, a violin virtuoso himself at the time, Batiashvili proves that she is a world-class violinist.
Barenboim also encouraged the exceptional violinist from Georgia and living in Germany to perform Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto. The result is a puristic recording, freed above all from the influence of other interpretations, which reveals Tchaikovsky’s work as what it wants to portray: an honest and sensitive documentation of human pain. Both Barenboim and Batiashvili attached great importance to giving the great emotions that characterize the work a clear structure without reducing the soulful potential in them. The Staatskapelle Berlin supports Batiashvili’s virtuoso playing with its warm sound structure and gives the recording a first-class foundation.
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 unequaled 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.
