Marking the 150th anniversary year of Rachmaninov's birth, these 2023 concerts from Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles offer state-of-the-art readings of the composer's concerts from some of today's biggest stars, pianist Yuja Wang and conductor Gustavo Dudamel, leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic. One of the concerts also happened to fall on Wang's 36th birthday, and perhaps the set offers a good place to check in on her as she enters mid-career. She is certainly a pianist of inexhaustible energy, having performed all five of these works in one day with the Philadelphia Orchestra not long before these recordings were made (on successive nights). She has these monuments of the virtuoso repertory down cold, applying pedal sparingly so as to emphasize the crystalline perfection of her fingering. She is also suited to the repertory; there is nobody that one would rather hear in the clattering finale of the Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30. The Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43, has wonderful forward energy, which Wang and Dudamel share. Its famous 18th variation, however, lacks warmth, and there are places where it all seems a bit too perfect, a bit over-rehearsed. Deutsche Grammophon's sound may contribute to this impression; these were live recordings, but they sound as though they could have been made in a studio. These words of caution, however, may be mere nitpicking; these are, by any standard, very fine performances of Rachmaninov. ~ James Manheim