Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Mussorgsky Available Now

If you like Orchestral Spectaculars, have we got the record for you!

What you want this record for is the best performance of Night On Bald Mountain ever recorded.

Fiedler plays it with a kind of pull-out-all-the-stops abandonment that no other conductor has on a modern recording, not to my knowledge anyway. It’s supposed to be a wild witches’ frenzy, and this is the only performance I know of that allows you to experience the full measure of diabolic revelry playing in your mind’s eye.

This is one of those “sleeper” albums that, as record collectors, you might stumble across from time to time, especially if you’re the kind of person who does nothing but play records all day. You will simply be amazed at the performance and the sound on this copy.

The Sound

Lively, set in a huge hall, with big orchestral sound, and more energy than you will find on 99 out of 100 classical LPs. So present, with an extended top end and transparency that allows you to “see” to the back of the hall.

Huge low brass, the kind you hear on Ansermet’s recording from the Victoria Hall. What a sound!

It gets loud and it stays clean doing it. Not many records can make that claim.

This pressing clearly has DEMONSTRATION QUALITY SOUND — not in every way, but in some important ways. The ENERGY of both the sound and the performances of these barnburning showpieces is truly awesome. Fiedler brings this music to LIFE like no other conductor we have heard.

This pressing boasts relatively rich, sweet strings, especially for a Deutsche Grammophon LP. Both sides really get quiet in places, a sure sign that all the dynamics of the master tape were protected in the mastering of this copy, and the reason it is so hard to find a copy that plays better than Mint Minus Minus.

DG in 1976

We love the album, but sadly most copies range in sound from mediocre to bad — dreadful in fact. If you’ve played a fair number of DG recordings over the years you might not have any trouble believing how mediocre the average one is.

Being a DG recording, one of the things you won’t be demonstrating with this record is 1950’s Living Stereo Tubey Magical string tone. It’s just not part of the DG sound — not in 1976 anyway. In the 50s DG had a very different sound as you might imagine; we’ve played those 50s records and we know just how wonderful they can sound. Finding them in clean condition is the hard part.

That said, this record is ALIVE, and that counts for a lot here at Better Records. Here are the dynamics that are rarely heard outside of the concert hall, as well as wonderful spaciousness, openness and depth. Note especially how the string basses and cellos growl like the real thing.

Table Setup

This is an excellent record for adjusting tracking weight, VTA, azimuth and the like. Classical music is really the ultimate test for proper turntable/arm/cartridge setup (and evaluation). A huge and powerful recording such as this quickly separates the men from the boys stereo-wise. Recordings of this quality are the reason there are $10,000+ front ends in the first place. You don’t need to spend that kind of money to play this record, but if you do, this is the record that will show you what you got for your hard-earned dough.

Ideally, you would want to work your setup magic at home with this record, then take it to a friend’s house and see if you can achieve the same results on his system. I’ve done this sort of thing for years. (Sadly, not so much anymore; nobody I know can play records like these the way we can. Playing and critically evaluating records all day, every day, year after year, you get pretty good at it. And the more you do it, the easier it gets.)

Properly set VTA is especially critical on this record, as it is on most classical recordings. The smallest change will dramatically affect the timbre, texture and harmonic information of the strings, as well as the rest of the instruments of the orchestra.

DOR Scale

I remember playing these DG pressings only five or ten years ago and hearing shrill strings, harmonic distortion and many other unpleasant sonic qualities.

Today the sound is dramatically better. This is no accident. It is the result of both hard work and the Revolutions in Audio we discuss on the site.

Having said that, this is certainly not the record for everyone. You must look past its minor shortcomings to hear what it does that practically no other recording of the work has done, in my experience anyway. To me it’s priceless.

A word of caution: Unless your system is firing on all cylinders, even our hottest Hot Stamper copies — the Super Hot and White Hot pressings with the biggest, most dynamic, clearest, and least distorted sound — can have problems . Your system should be thoroughly warmed up, your electricity should be clean and cooking, you’ve got to be using the right room treatments, and we also highly recommend using a demagnetizer such as the Walker Talisman on the record, your cables (power, interconnect and speaker) as well as the individual drivers of your speakers.

This is a record that’s going to demand a lot from the listener, and we want to make sure that you feel you’re up to the challenge. If you don’t mind putting in a little hard work, here’s a record that will reward your time and effort many times over, and probably teach you a thing or two about tweaking your gear in the process (especially your VTA adjustment, just to pick an obvious area most audiophiles neglect).