Hot Stamper Pressings on Decca and London Available now
The Decca budget reissue you see to the left had passable sonics. It would probably be competitive with the top five percent ot Heavy Vinyl pressings that we’ve played over the last 30 years. Some of those would earn grades of 1.5+, which turned out to be the case here.
We play every pressing we can get our hands on because you never know just how good one of these budget reissues can sound until you clean it up and give it a spin.
Most don’t pan out — maybe one out of five is any good — but that’s just the nature of the best when it comes to collecting top quality records.
Most OJC pressings of jazz albums aren’t very good, but the best ones clearly are because they win our blinded shootouts.
If you want the best sound, you had better have your mind open to the idea that the originals are not the only ones that were mastered correctly. There are currently 175 records we’ve identified as sounding better on a reissue pressing, and that number probably represents less than half of the ones we’ve encountered over the many years we’ve actively been doing shootouts.
The commentary for the amazing sounding Decca originals below describes just how wonderful they are, worlds better than anything you can find on Heavy Vinyl.
Our Notes for Our Shootout Winner
On this vintage UK Decca pressing the sound is big and rich, lively and open, with TONS of depth and huge climaxes that hold together.
The voices in the chorus are clear, natural, separate and full-bodied — this is the hallmark of a vintage Golden Age recording: naturalness.
We know of no other recording of the work that does as good a job of capturing such a large orchestra and chorus.
Both sides here are BIG, with the space and depth of the wonderful Kingsway Hall that the LSO perform in. John Culshaw produced the album, which surely accounts for the huge size and space, not to mention quality, of the recording. The sound is dynamic and tonally correct throughout.
Of course, Monteux is a master of the French idiom — his performance of the complete ballet here is definitive in our opinion.
There are about 150 orchestral recordings we’ve awarded the honor of offering the best performances with the highest quality sound, and this record certainly has earned a place on that list.
The Monteux Era
by Thomas Simone
Monteux’s performance of Ravel’s masterpiece, Daphnis and Chloe is legendary. Monteux studied the score with Ravel and conducted the première of the ballet in 1912. John Culshaw produced the recording in 1959 for Decca with a sense of special occasion, and the recorded performance in very fine sound by Alan Reeve shows a common artistic purpose (London CS 6147/Decca SXL 2164).
Partly because of the need to place the entire score on a single disc, the recording is cut at a slightly low volume. Also the performance setting is larger and more reverberant than is usual for Decca. This perspective, however, works wonderfully with Monteux’s vision of Ravel’s mythic world of Mediterranean shepherds, shepherdesses, and pirates. Monteux’s characteristics show brilliantly in his instrumental balance and sense of delicacy, his mastery of the work’s shape, and his narrative understanding of the ballet.
Most important and moving of all is Monteux’s love of the music. We have few performances on record sound that offer the beauty, insight, and joy of Monteux’s sublime Daphnis and Chloe
Further Reading