More of the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Many years ago we wrote the following review for CS 6107:
An exceptionally QUIET copy for an early Blueback pressing. The sound is old-fashioned Decca, which seems to suit this music quite well. The hall is reverberant, as it would have been in Mozart’s day, and the perspective is mid-hall. The string tone is excellent. Some of the louder passages might be a bit strained, but overall the sound is correct for this music.
Maag and the LSO are of course Mozart experts and the performances here do not disappoint. A rare title and a lovely one.
More recently we got in a nice pressing that sounded OK, nothing special, even after a good cleaning.
Were we wrong years ago? Hard to say. That copy from many years ago is gone.
Three things we always keep in mind when a pressing doesn’t sound like we remember it did, or think it should:
- Our standards are quite a bit higher now, having spent decades critically listening to vintage classical pressings by the hundreds.
- Our stereo is dramatically more revealing and more accurate than it used to be.
- Since no two records sound the same, maybe the one from long ago actually did sound as good as we thought at the time.
All things considered, the consensus would now be that CS 6107 is very unlikely to be as good a record as we used to think it was.
A classic case of live and learn and also a case of progress in audio, probably. We really can’t be sure.
Further Reading