• Amazing sound throughout this original London pressing of the Vienna Octet’s performance of Schubert’s sublime chamber work, with both sides earning INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades
• 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
• The rich, textured sheen of the strings was far more natural and more real than on all other copies we played, with a clarity and sweetness we were looking for in the violin and cello
• Both of these sides are super spacious and positively dripping with ambience — talk about Tubey Magic, the liquidity of the sound here is positively uncanny

This vintage London 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 Schubert’s Octet 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 1958
• 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.

Copies with rich lower mids and nice extension up top did the best in our shootout, assuming they weren’t veiled or smeary of course. So many things can go wrong on a record! We know, we’ve heard them all.

Top end extension is critical to the sound of the best copies. Lots of old records (and new ones) have no real top end; consequently, the studio or stage will be missing much of its natural air and space, and instruments will lack their full complement of harmonic information.

Tube smear is common to most vintage pressings. The copies that tend to do the best in a shootout will have the least (or none), yet are full-bodied, tubey and rich.

Size and Space

One of the qualities that we don’t talk about on the site nearly enough is the SIZE of the record’s presentation. Some copies of the album just sound small — they don’t extend all the way to the outside edges of the speakers, and they don’t seem to take up all the space from the floor to the ceiling. In addition, the sound can often be recessed, with a lack of presence and immediacy in the center.

Other copies — my notes for these copies often read “BIG and BOLD” — create a huge soundfield, with the music positively jumping out of the speakers. They’re not brighter, they’re not more aggressive, they’re not hyped-up in any way, they’re just bigger and clearer.

And most of the time those very special pressings are just plain more involving. When you hear a copy that does all that — a copy like this one — it’s an entirely different listening experience.

What We’re Listening For On Octet

• 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.

Side One

• Adagio – Allegro
• Adagio
• Allegro Vivace – Trio

Side Two

• Andante
• Minuet (Allegretto)
• Andante Molto – Allegro

“This is the largest-scale chamber work composed by Schubert. The instrumentation is nearly identical to that of the Beethoven septet, with the addition of a second violin.” – Wikipedia

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“Schubert’s light and flowing Octet in F major is of great importance in both an historical and a compositional aspect. Thanks to its combination of string and wind instruments, it is akin in character to the cheerful divertimento and the contemplative serenade. That the commissioned work is very similar to Beethoven’s popular Septet op. 20 with regard to the individual movements and the key relationships is by no means accidental – that was what was ordered. Schubert occupied himself with the almighty giant’s composition, though for a different reason: with his own Octet he wanted to »pave his way towards writing a great symphony«, whose dramatic force and form is clearly suggested here.”

“Steeped in the musical traditions of the city on the Danube, the Vienna Octet is the ideal ensemble to perform this work. Led by Willi Boskovsky, who became world famous as concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor of the New Year’s Day Concerts, the ensemble plays with great agility, joy and togetherness from the first note on. The sound of each individual instrument comes over vividly in a natural, chamber-music-like atmosphere.”