Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Rimsky-Korsakov Available Now
Wikipedia has a nice entry for some of Rimsky-Korsakov’s ideas behind the final movement of the piece:
These [later] works resemble brightly colored mosaics, striking in their own right and often scored with a juxtaposition of pure orchestral groups. The final tutti of Scheherazade is a prime example of this scoring. The theme is assigned to trombones playing in unison, and is accompanied by a combination of string patterns. Meanwhile, another pattern alternates with chromatic scales in the woodwinds and a third pattern of rhythms is played by percussion.
Wikipedia
Could not have said it better myself!
We’ve written at length about the thrills to be had when playing the last movement of Scheherazade — not brilliantly, to be sure, as the writer for Wikipedia has done, but serviceably I hope. Unfortunately, not every pressing of Reiner’s performance is able to communicate the musical values of the work the way the best pressings can.
As you can see from our notes for the this Heavy Vinyl Analogue Productions pressing, the thrill was barely there on the first side, and by the second side it was completely gone.
The notes from our 2024 shootout read:
- Not dry or squawky
- Really lacking depth and dynamics.
- Big, thick bass gets annoying.
- Big brass not too bright but it is over-textured and flat.
Plenty of modern records suffer from these as well as lots of other shortcomings. For some reason, the writers for The Absolute Sound who put this crappy LP on their Super Disc list didn’t seem bothered by them the way we were.
If you own this pressing, here are the kinds of things you might want to listen for in order to recognize its many, and quite serious, failings.
When played head to head against any properly-mastered vintage vinyl LP, this pressing will fall short in a number of important areas. Linked below are titles we’ve found to be good for testing these same qualities in a recording.
- More pressings we’ve found to be good for testing for bloated bass.
- More pressings we’ve found to be good for testing for compression.
- More pressings we’ve found to be good for testing for a lack of orchestral depth, size and space.
- More pressings we’ve found to be good for testing for a lack of transparency.
If I were in charge of the TAS Super Disc list, obviously I would not have put this record on it. It’s not a Super Disc. It’s not even a Very Good disc. To be honest, it’s actually a pretty Bad Disc.
The TAS List is full of such discs these days. Granted, it always had some, but now it has a great many, with more being added every year.
Wait — There’s More
Just ran into this 2013 review of the album from Jonathin Valin at TAS:
LSC 2446 Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade. Producer: Richard Mohr; Recording Engineer: Lewis Layton. Recorded February 8, 1960 in Orchestra Hall, Chicago. Grade: A+. Another one of HP’s favorites, this LP (at least in its earliest pressings) is famously wonderful sounding, and the Analogue Productions version certainly lives up to the hype. Once again string tone—and this disc is celebrated for its string tone—is ravishingly beautiful. The bass is astonishing deep and authoritative. And dynamics are tremendous.
The bass is not authoratative, it is overblown and annoying.
The dynamics are not tremendous, they are, in fact, rather lacking.
The string tone may indeed be passable, but ravishingly beautiful — for any Heavy Vinyl pressing — is a stretch.
A properly-mastered, properly-pressed vintage RCA should sound more or less like this one.
Our favorite performance of Scheherazade is still Ansermet’s with the Suisse Romande.
Further Reading
Apparently, only your astronomically overpriced “hot stampers” are worth listening to. I find that hard to believe.
Dear Sir,
Not sure why you would think that. They made a lot of the original pressings and they can easily be found for reasonable amounts of money. They have the potential to sound dramatically better than this sorry piece of audiophile vinyl.
Best, TP