The original, favorable review for this album you see further down is from at least ten years ago and probably more like fifteen.

When we revisited the copies we had of this title more recently, we felt the sound was badly lacking in many respects, with no real extension up top nor much weight to the bottom, the very definition of boxy sound.

Many of the vintage classical records we audition have sound that we liked well enough in the past but now no longer meet our standards. Those pressings might sound fine on an old school stereo (or its modern equivalent), but we have something very different to play our records on, courtesy of the many revolutionary changes in audio that have dramatically altered the quality of analog playback over the last twenty five years.

We much prefer Boskovsky’s performances for Decca for waltzes and the like, by Strauss or anyone else.

TAS List Thoughts

We wanted to like the record, it’s on the TAS List for cryin’ out loud, shouldn’t it at least be pretty good?

It very well may be amazingly good, we can’t say it is or it isn’t. In order to be more sure of our opinion, we would need a great deal more data to back it up. We would need to have a large number of copies on hand, clean them all and play them in order to make it possible to find the killer stamper that may be hiding in the pile, assuming one might be.

But why spend all that money and all that time chasing after a record that may turn out to be just another mistake Harry Pearson made when he included Strauss Waltzes on his famous list?

He regularly updated his list of Super Discs from year to year. Some records were added, some removed, so perhaps we might give him the benefit of the doubt and posit that, were he living today, LSC 2500 would have long ago been given the boot.

• Records that have no business being called super discs
• Hot Stamper pressings of TAS list records available now
• Reviews and commentaries for TAS super disc recordings

Our review for the album from years ago:

Harry Pearson put this record on his TAS List of Super Disc LPs, but it’s the rare copy that deserves such an exclusive ranking.

This copy delivers the sonic goods on side one with Super Hot Stamper sound.

Side two is not quite up to the standards set by side one. It’s darker, not as open and lacks some of the richness of the first side. That said, it’s still better than the average copy we’ve played and worlds better than any reissue.

Both sides have some deep powerful bass and are fairly dynamic.

Three things we always keep in mind when a pressing doesn’t sound like we remember it did, or think it should:

1. Our standards are quite a bit higher now, having spent decades critically listening to vintage classical pressings by the hundreds.
2. Our stereo is dramatically more revealing and more accurate than it used to be.
3. Since no two records sound the same, maybe the one we played long ago actually did sound as good as we thought at the time.

All things considered, the consensus would now be that LSC 2500 is very unlikely to be as good a record as we used to think it was.

As for other records we think we got wrong — we may change our minds again, you never can tell, all it takes is one good pressing to change our minds — you can find more examples under the heading of live and learn.

Side One

Vienna Blood
Artists’ Life
My Life is Love and Laughter

Side Two

Roses From the South
Treasure Waltz
Thunder and Lightning Polka