Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin
Reviews and Commentaries for TAS Super Disc Recordings
This original Capitol record with Michael Rabin is ONE OF THE VERY BEST VIOLIN RECORDINGS we have ever played here at Better Records. The sound is OUT OF THIS WORLD! The immediacy of the violin tone is unbelievable — Rabin is in the room with you throughout the entirety of the record in a way that few recordings in our experience could hope to equal.
What more can we say, other than the music is every bit as good as the sound. If you love the Classical Romantic period, and who doesn’t?, these selections will have you in a world of sound and music rarely matched by anything but the best in live performance.
Another TAS List Oversight
This is another record that is not on the TAS List, but would certainly take top honors in a head to head shootout with any of the violin works to be found there.
This is an Older Classical/Orchestral Review
Most of the older reviews you see are for records that did not go through the shootout process, the revolutionary approach to finding better sounding pressings we started developing in the early 2000s and have since turned into a veritable science.
We found the records you see in these older listings by cleaning and playing a pressing or two of the album, which we then described and priced based on how good the sound and surfaces were. (For out Hot Stamper listings, the Sonic Grades and Vinyl Playgrades are listed separately.)
We were often wrong back in those days, something we have no reason to hide. Audio equipment and record cleaning technologies have come a long way since those darker days, a subject we discuss here.
Currently, 99% (or more!) of the records we sell are cleaned, then auditioned under rigorously controlled conditions, up against a number of other pressings. We award them sonic grades, and then condition check them for surface noise.
As you may imagine, this approach requires a great deal of time, effort and skill, which is why we currently have a highly trained staff of about ten. No individual or business without the aid of such a committed group could possibly dig as deep into the sound of records as we have, and it is unlikely that anyone besides us could ever come along to do the kind of work we do.
The term “Hot Stampers” gets thrown around a lot these days, but to us it means only one thing: a record that has been through the shootout process and found to be of exceptionally high quality.
The result of our labor is the hundreds of titles seen here, every one of which is unique and guaranteed to be the best sounding copy of the album you have ever heard or you get your money back.
“The Paganini Moto Perpetuo on this disc was recorded in one take. The story goes that the engineer wanted to get sound levels. Rabin started the Paganini and immediately everyone realized it was something special and within a fraction of a second conductor, orchestra and soloist were as one. It was decided to issue the take for its perfection and sheer driving pace. As one listens to it, it is indeed one of those great moments in the recording history of the violin – thank you, Michael Rabin.”
TRACK LISTING
Side One
Kreisler – Caprice Viennois
Dinicu-Heifetz – Hora Staccato
Massenet – Meditation “Thais”
Sarasate – Zigeunerweisen
Side Two
Paganini / Kreisler – Moto Perpetuo
Brandl – Kreisler – The Old Refrain
Rimsky-Korsakov – Flight of the Bumble Bee
Saint-Saens – Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso
AMG Biography
Michael Rabin managed to be one of the most talented and tragic violin virtuosi of his generation. Hailed as a child prodigy, his talent matured gracefully into an adult level, but he failed to follow in his emotional growth, resulting in a cutting short of his career. He never reached the age of 36, yet remains one of the most fondly remembered of virtuoso violinists for listeners and fellow musicians such as Pinchas Zukerman, with whom he shared a teacher.