CHINESE pianist Yuja Wang will release her new album “Rachmaninoff: The Piano Concertos and Paganini Rhapsody” on two CDs, three LPs and digital Sept. 1 via the Deutsche Grammophon. To mark the 150th anniversary of Rachmaninoff’s birth, Wang joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic and its music and artistic director Gustavo Dudamel to perform all four of the composer’s piano concertos and “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini” at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles over two consecutive weekends in February last year. A formidably talented pianist himself, Rachmaninoff wrote a wide range of expressive, idiomatic music for piano, including these five dazzling large-scale works for piano and orchestra. They have been part of Wang’s repertoire since the start of her career, and she continues to bring fresh insights to their kaleidoscopic riches. She has collaborated with Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic many times, and a powerful sense of mutual respect and understanding is conveyed through these performances. As Dudamel notes, “We connect as if we were playing chamber music.” The Los Angeles Times noted in its review on Wang’s performance of Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto that Wang “attacked [the opening chords], making each one an ever more important event. She seemed to be saying, listen, this matters. … With Dudamel, who was propulsive and extravagantly detailed in the accompaniments, she went … for the dynamism of our times.” “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,” was written in 1934, halfway between the first and final versions of “Concerto No. 4.” It takes the last of Paganini’s “24 Caprices” for solo violin and transforms it in endlessly inventive ways. Wang reflects the work’s ever-changing moods, encompassing shimmering mystery, forceful energy, intense drama and magical lyricism, as she, Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic produce an interpretation of enormous emotional sweep and scale. (SD-Agencies) | 