More of the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Mozart
Neither the sound nor the performance of this 1958 Mercury are impressive here.
1958 just happens to be one of the All Time Great Years for Analog Recording, as can be seen from this amazing group of albums, all recorded or released that year.
This Mercury might be passable on an old school system, but it was too unpleasant to be played on the high quality modern equipment we use.
There are quite a number of others that we’ve run into over the years with similar shortcomings. Here they are, broken down by label.
- London/Decca records with weak sound or performances
- Mercury records with weak sound or performances
- RCA records with weak sound or performances
Have You Noticed…
If you’re a fan of Mercury Living Presence records — and what right-thinking audiophile wouldn’t be? — have you noticed that many of them, this one for example, don’t sound very good?
If you’re an audiophile with good equipment, you should have.
But did you? Or did you buy into the hype surrounding these rare pressings and just ignore the problems with the sound?
There is plenty of hype surrounding the hundreds of Heavy Vinyl pressings currently in print. I read a lot about how wonderful their sound is, but when I actually play them, I rarely find them to be any better than mediocre, and most of them are downright awful.
It seems as if the audiophile public has bought completely into the superiority of these remastered Heavy Vinyl pressings. Audiophiles have too often made the mistake of approaching these records with no trace of skepticism. How could so many be fooled so badly? Surely some of these people have good enough equipment to allow them to hear how bad these records sound.
I would say Mercury’s track record during the 50s and 60s is a pretty good one, offering (potentially) excellent sound for at least one out of every three titles or so.
And when I say “excellent sound,” in some cases I am being much too conservative. Astonishingly good sound is more like it.
But one out of three means the odds are good there would be a lot of dogs in their catalog. This is definitely one of them.
Mercury is a label we know well, having played more than a hundred to date. To see the Living Presence classical titles we’ve reviewed on this blog, click here.
Our Pledge of Service to You, the Discriminating Audiophile
We play mediocre-to-bad sounding pressings so that you don’t have to, a free service from your record-loving friends at Better Records.
You can find this one in our hall of shame, along with others that — in our opinion — are best avoided by audiophiles looking for hi-fidelity sound. Some of these records may have passable sonics, but the music is weak. These are also titles you can safely avoid.
We also have an audiophile hall of shame for records that were marketed to audiophiles with claims of superior sound. If you’ve spent much time on this blog, you know that these records are some of the worst sounding pressings we have ever had the misfortune to play.
We routinely put them in our Hot Stamper shootouts, head to head with the vintage records we offer. We are often more than a little surprised at just how bad an “audiophile record” can sound and still be considered an “audiophile record.”
If you own any of these so-called audiophile pressings, let us send you one of our Hot Stamper LPs so that you can hear it for yourself in your own home, on your own system. Every one of our records is guaranteed to be the best sounding copy of the album you have ever heard or you get your money back.
Further Reading
- What to listen for on classical records
- Best orchestral performances with top quality sound
- Well recorded classical albums from the core collection available now
