In reply to your post, Ben campbell, you ask is the redbook layer remastered? The recording I asked about is a new release (recorded 2002) and has been issued only in the compatible CD/SACD format. The piano sounds fine, but the orchestral sound is really bad.
SACD/CD Question
I've got a question for you SACD guys. I don't have SACD, but have a high-quality two-channel system. I recently bought my first so-called hybrid compatible CD/SACD, a Sony recording, made live in the Berlin Philharmonie in 2002, of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto played by Arcadi Volodos, with the Berlin Philharmonic under Seiji Ozawa. I have no idea what this one sounds like on an SACD system, but on my two-channel system the orchestral sound is just conspicuously AWFUL! This was all the more surprising to me because I'd earlier bought the same pianist's performance of the Rachmaninoff Third Piano Concerto, also recorded live, in the same hall, in 1999, with the same orchestra under James Levine, also on Sony (but with a different recording engineer), and this one's NOT a hybrid compatible CD/SACD but a plain stereo CD, and it sounds just fine. Can anyone shed some light on what is going on here? I'm reluctant now to buy any more so-called hybrid compatible CD/SACD discs after getting burned.