Yuja Wang is one of the most technically astounding pianists of our time, with a command of the keyboard matched by sheer muscular strength. Here she turns her attention to Russia and some of its leading pianist-composers. The Rachmaninoff Preludes and Études-Tableaux are rich and swirl with passion, while Scriabin’s Tenth Sonata, a work of mystical imaginings, seethes with dangerous life under her fingers. Briefly looking further afield, a group of Hungarian composer György Ligeti’s tiny Études diverts the attention magically before Prokofiev’s Eighth Piano Sonata, his masterpiece in the form, which Wang characterizes with genuine originality and imagination.

When the first concert of the series founded by the composer Karl Amadeus Hartmann (later designated as musica viva) took place at Munich's Prince Regent's Theatre on 7 October 1945, it marked the birth of an important new cultural event in post-war Germany. Up to the present day, this oldest concert series for New Music still brings together the world's most important artists - conductors and interpreters alike - in the field of new and the newest music, also continuing to set new standards for the interpretation of new classical music with the outstanding Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Originally released in 2000 on Ars Musici, the sublime recordings by the Artemis Quartett of György Ligeti's String Quartet No. 1, "Métamorphoses nocturnes" (1953-1954), and his String Quartet No. 2 (1968) fully merit this 2005 reissue by Virgin Classics, not only for the high quality of the music surely some of the most communicative and rewarding quartet music since Bartók or Shostakovich but also for the precision, depth, and resonance of the group's playing.