Yuja Wang & Gustavo Dudamel perform Rachmaninoff: Paganini Rhapsody

One of Rachmaninoff’s most celebrated and admired works, the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini transforms the famous theme of Paganini’s 24th Caprice into a sequence of endlessly inventive musical character studies, showing the composer’s late style at its distilled, brilliant best. Few pianists are better placed than Yuja Wang to meet its manifold challenges, calling as it does for sparkling virtuosity, quicksilver shifts of mood and – in the celebrated eighteenth variation – heartfelt lyricism. She brings all that and more to this performance, part of her acclaimed cycle of Rachmaninoff’s complete works for piano and orchestra recorded with Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.