Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Titles Available Now
EXCELLENT SOUND for this TAS List Shaded Dog, with each side earning an A++ grade and playing relatively quietly.
This is a BIG one folks, as most of you probably know already. It is not easy to find copies of this album with excellent sound and fairly quiet surfaces on both sides, and if you don’t believe me, I encourage you to try.
The violin is sweet and full of rosiny texture here. The whole string section is full of Living Stereo magic. The soundstage is wide and deep, the overall sound rich and warm. The midrange is nothing short of magical.
This is the kind of Golden Age recording that makes us audiophiles lose it. It’s one of the few legitimate reasons to take the TAS Super Disc List seriously in the first place. HP put records like this on the audiophile map and we owe him a debt of gratitude for having done so. Our musical lives are remarkably richer for it.
UPDATE 2022
Our current favorite recordings for sound and performance of The Comedians is this one.
These are the comments about a previous copy we had on the website (2001), many of which apply to this copy as well.
DEMO QUALITY. ONE OF THE BEST CLASSICAL RECORDINGS I HAVE EVER HEARD.
This recording is so natural it’s FREAKISH. You get swept up in the music completely because the sound allows you to forget it’s even a recording at all. All the normal adjectives apply; I won’t bother to repeat them here. If I ever make a list of the greatest recordings of all time, as Harry does with his “Best of the Bunch” dozen, you can bet that this record will be on it.
[I can’t say that I would be nearly as enthusiastic about this title nowadays as I was back then. Our playback system has gone through a lot of changes since 2001. The stereo I had back then (all tube, richer, darker and less revealing) no doubt was a better match for the best pressings of this recording than the one I have now.
Note also that we gave the record a Double Plus sonic grade, not the full Three Pluses a top copy would earn if it were as “freakishly good” as I thought at the time.]
Side One
Khachaturian — Masquerade Suite
Side Two
Kabalevsky — The Comedians