First all analogue (AAA) release on Deutsche Grammophon since the 1980s

[On Tape 1972]

Legendary Russian pianist Mikhail Pletnev has made his first studio album with Deutsche Grammophon since 2005. An artist whose musicianship has long been enriched by his work as conductor and composer, he performs two fascinating sets of preludes: Chopin’s Op. 28 and Scriabin’s Op. 11. Pletnev brings his incomparable art of nuance to these 48 works, revealing the individual character of each miniature in turn.

Out on 5 December, the album was recorded on Pletnev’s beloved Shigeru Kawai piano in a single 4½‑hour session at Berlin’s Emil Berliner Studios in November 2024. While using an 11-channel microphone set-up for the high-resolution digital audio to be mixed for CD, download/streaming and Dolby Atmos versions, producer Rainer Maillard and his team simultaneously captured Pletnev’s performances on analogue master tapes – the first new 100% pure analogue DG recording since the 1980s. They employed two custom-made Sennheiser microphones, recorded on a tube Studer C37, then edited the various takes using the physical cut-and-paste sound engineering techniques of the tape era.

Source: https://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/a ... des-277156

For those interested. Pretty remarkable to get something like that done in 2025.