'Tuhu' First MQA-CD Release on Eudora Records

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Album Pays Homage to Brazilian Composer

Eudora Records is a prestigious independent classical label, established in Madrid by producer, recording engineer and musician Gonzalo Noqué in 2014. The label releases a select number of titles each year, and its stated aim is “to capture the finest music performances in the best possible sound quality.” Noqué’s label offers its complete catalogue in MQA, sourced from the original masters, for streaming and download. Eudora’s latest recording 'Tuhu', featuring guitar virtuosa Gaëlle Solal, is its first album to be released on MQA-CD.

Tuhu release

The album is inspired by renowned Brazilian composer, Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959), whose trademark sound combined Latin American folk with Western classical music. After meeting a group of Brazilian musicians at a special festival marking the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death, Solal took a life-changing trip to Villa-Lobos’s hometown of Rio de Janeiro, where she discovered a whole new approach to creating music. The resulting album is a beautiful collection of compositions, performed and largely arranged by Solal, of pieces written by Villa-Lobos and other composers connected to the Brazilian’s music.

MQA collaboration
Gonzalo Noqué of Eudora Records, described his personal experience of working with MQA, “As a producer, you come into contact with so many people from the music world – musicians, producers, recording engineers – and each of them has a different musical and technical background. MQA’s Bob Stuart, however, is that rare person with a holistic knowledge of the whole music and recording process. I value every comment he makes about my recordings, and I have the utmost respect for his work and vision. It is a pleasure for me to release what I hope will be the first in a long series of MQA-CDs, delivered on a hybrid SACD in the best possible sound. I really hope you enjoy listening to them!”

Bob Stuart, MQA founder, added, “Gonzalo is a real craftsman and I have been delighted to work with him from the beginning. There is a naturalness and profound clarity to the sound in each recording, and Eudora always picks great artists and world class production. To bring the highest sound quality, MQA encodes directly from the original DSD256 masters. Tuhu is the first Eudora album to be released in MQA-CD and we are sure it won’t be the last!”

MQA-CD

The performances were recorded in September 2019 at the Auditorio San Francisco in Ávila, Spain and captured in DSD256. The original master was then encoded in MQA and converted directly into CD format (44.1kHz/16bit). MQA-CD brings these benefits:

- MQA preserves delicate time resolution in the sound, capturing the spatial acoustics of the venue. MQA avoids ‘smearing’ distortions which are inevitable when making a normal CD;
- MQA-CD is fully compatible, no special equipment is needed to play it and many of the sound benefits are available to everyone;
- If the CD is played back using an MQA-enabled device, the file can ‘unfold’ to as high as 352.8 kHz, delivering the best possible sound approved by the label.

Purchase the MQA-CD of Gaëlle Solal's 'Tuhu' from the Eudora Records website.