More of the music of Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

More of the music of Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

• Both sides of this early Shaded Dog pressing have outstanding Living Stereo sound for Mendelssohn and Prokofiev’s concertos, earning Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER
• It’s also fairly quiet at Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
• A truly superb recording with huge, spacious, dynamic, lively sound – Tubey Magical richness is a big plus too
• These performances by Heifetz and the Boston Symphony under the baton of Charles Munch are some of the best we’ve ever heard – Heifetz is on fire with passion for these exciting pieces
• As usual for a Living Stereo Heifetz violin concerto recording, he is front and center, with every movement of his bow clearly audible without being hyped-up in the least
• Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto takes up all of this Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) side two and is close to the BEST we have ever heard, right up there with our Shootout Winner

No violin concerto recording can be considered to have the real Living Stereo sound if the violin isn’t right, and fortunately this violin is very very right, with the kind of rosiny texture and immediacy that brings the music to life right in your very own listening room.

The Prokofiev concerto is a longtime member of the TAS Super Disc List.

String Tone

It’s practically impossible to hear that kind of string sound on any recording made in the last thirty years (and this of course includes practically everything pressed on Heavy Vinyl). It may be a lost art but as long as we have these wonderful vintage pressings to play, it’s an art that is not being lost on us.

It’s also as wide, deep and three-dimensional as any, which is, of course, all to the good, but what makes the sound of these recordings so special is the timbral accuracy of the instruments in every section.

I don’t think the engineers could have cut this record any better — it has all the orchestral magic one could ask for, as well as the resolving power, clarity and presence that are missing from so many Golden Age records.

This is the kind of record that will make you want to take all your heavy vinyl classical pressings and put them in storage. They cannot begin to sound the way this record sounds. (Before you put them in storage or on Ebay, please play them against this pressing so that you can be confident in your decision to rid yourself of their insufferable mediocrity.)

This vintage Shaded Dog pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

What The Best Sides Of Mendelssohn and Prokofiev’s Concertos Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

• The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
• The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1959
• Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
• Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
• Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space

No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.

What We’re Listening For On Mendelssohn and Prokofiev’s Concertos

• Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
• The Big Sound comes next — wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
• Then transient information — fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
• Next: transparency — the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
• Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

Musical Credits

• Felix Mendelssohn – composer
• Sergei Prokofiev – composer
• Charles Munch – conductor
• Jascha Heifetz – violin
• Accompanied by The Boston Symphony

Vinyl Condition

Mint Minus Minus is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)

Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of other pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don’t have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful recordings.

If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that’s certainly your prerogative, but we can’t imagine losing what’s good about this music — the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight — just to hear it with less background noise.

Classic Records – Let’s Try and Forget The Sound

Classic Records ruined this album, as we expected, having played their mediocre-at-best pressings by the dozens before this one came out. Their version is dramatically more aggressive, edgy and smeared than our Hot Stamper. In fact it’s just plain awful, like most of the classical recordings they remastered.

A Must Own Classical Record

This Demo Disc Quality recording should be part of any serious Classical Collection. Others that belong in that category can be found here.

Side One

Mendelssohn – Violin Concerto In E Minor, Opus 64

Side Two

Prokofieff – Violin Concerto In G Minor, Opus 63

Violin Concerto (Mendelssohn)

Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64, is his last concerto. Well received at its premiere, it has remained among the most prominent and highly-regarded violin concertos. It holds a central place in the violin repertoire and has developed a reputation as an essential concerto for all aspiring concert violinists to master, and usually one of the first Romantic era concertos they learn. A typical performance lasts just under half an hour.

Mendelssohn originally proposed the idea of the violin concerto to Ferdinand David, a close friend and then concertmaster of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Although conceived in 1838, the work took another six years to complete and was not premiered until 1845. During this time, Mendelssohn maintained a regular correspondence with David, who gave him many suggestions. The work itself was one of the foremost violin concertos of the Romantic era and was influential on many other composers.

Although the concerto consists of three movements in a standard fast–slow–fast structure and each movement follows a traditional form, it was innovative and included many novel features for its time. Distinctive aspects include the almost immediate entrance of the violin at the beginning of the work (rather than following an orchestral preview of the first movement’s major themes, as was typical in Classical-era concertos) and the through-composed form of the concerto as a whole, in which the three movements are melodically and harmonically connected and played attacca (each movement immediately following the previous one without any pauses).

Many violinists have recorded the concerto and it is performed in concerts and classical music competitions. It was recorded by Nathan Milstein and the New York Philharmonic as an album and released as the first LP record upon the format’s introduction in 1948.

Violin Concerto (Prokofiev)

The Violin Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 63, written in 1935 by Sergei Prokofiev, is a work in three movements:

• • Allegro moderato
  • Andante assai
  • Allegro, ben marcato

It was premiered on 1 December 1935 at the Teatro Monumental in Madrid, by the French violinist Robert Soetens and the Madrid Symphony Orchestra conducted by Enrique Fernández Arbós. Prokofiev wrote it after the first performance, by Soetens and Samuel Dushkin, of his Sonata for Two Violins, which pleased him greatly. Dushkin had recently had a concerto written for him by Igor Stravinsky, so Prokofiev did the same for Soetens. Prokofiev was on a concert tour with Soetens while he was working on the concerto, and later wrote, “the number of places in which I wrote the Concerto shows the kind of nomadic concert-tour life I led then. The main theme of the 1st movement was written in Paris, the first theme of the 2nd movement at Voronezh, the orchestration was finished in Baku and the premiere was given in Madrid.”

The Spanish liked the premiere so much that they sent a delegation of musicians to thank Prokofiev afterwards.

The first two British performances of the concerto were again with Soetens: in 1936 under Sir Henry J. Wood, and in 1938, under the composer. Soetens played the work many times, all over the world, concluding with the premiere performance in South Africa in 1972, when he was aged 75 (he continued appearing in public until age 95, and died in 1997, aged 100).

The concerto is more conventional than the composer’s early bold compositions. It starts off with a simple violin melody related to traditional Russian folk music. The graceful violin melody flows throughout the entire second movement, and ends with the initial violin theme reappearing in the orchestra’s somber lower register, now accompanied by the solo violin. The third movement rondo’s theme has a taste of Spain, with the clacking of castanets each time the theme appears.

Apart from the solo violin, the concerto is scored for moderate-sized orchestra including two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, snare drum, bass drum, castanets, cymbals, triangle, and strings.

-Wikipedia