More of the Music of Respighi
- An early London pressing of Solti and the Israel Phil’s performance of this wonderful ballet suite, here with seriously good Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them from first note to last
- It’s also remarkably quiet at Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
- An abundance of energy, loads of rich detail and texture, superb transparency and excellent clarity (particularly on side one) – the very definition of Demo Disc sound
- After trying a few years ago, we knew the best copies had the potential to be knockouts in the Decca canon – after that it was only a matter of finding enough clean copies
- No other performance or recording we played could hold a candle to this one – the Fiedler we used to like years ago was especially disappointing this time around
- The best sides were always the biggest, clearest and most three-dimensional, assuming they were able to retain the rich, natural, balanced tonality that is inherently key to a good record, or a great one in this case
- There are about 150 orchestral recordings we think offer the best performances with the highest quality sound. This record is certainly deserving of a place on that list.
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 La Boutique Fantasque 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 1957
- 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 La Boutique Fantasque
- 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.
- Powerful bass — which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
- 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.
Production and Engineering
James Walker and John Culshaw were the producers, James Brown the engineer for these sessions from March 1957. It’s yet another remarkable disc from the Golden Age of Vacuum Tube Recording.
There is a solidity and richness to the sound beyond all others, yet clarity and transparency are not sacrificed in the least. It’s as wide, deep and three-dimensional as any, which is of course all to the good, but what makes the sound of these recordings so special is the weight and power of the brass, combined with unerring timbral accuracy of the instruments in every section of the orchestra.
Side One
- Overture
- Tarantella
- Mazurka
- Dance
- Cosaque
- Can Can
Side Two
La Boutique Fantasque
- Valse Lente
- Nocturne
- Galop
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice – Dukas
La Boutique Fantasque
La Boutique fantasque, also known as The Magic Toyshop or The Fantastic Toyshop, is a ballet in one act conceived by Léonide Massine, who devised the choreography for a libretto written with the artist André Derain, a pioneer of Fauvism. Derain also designed the décor and costumes for the ballet. Ottorino Respighi wrote the music based on piano pieces by Gioachino Rossini.
The Rossini piano works used include Gherkins, Radishes, Butterflies, Themes in Variation, Almonds, Petit Caprice (Style Offenbach), Tarantelle pur Sang, Castor Oil, Abortive polka, and La Danza.
The music was a major contribution to the success of the ballet, whose score was well-orchestrated, kept Rossini’s harmonies, and generally retained his phrasing unaltered while investing his melodies with a new breadth.
Respighi’s score soon took on an existence of its own in the concert hall as a suite. It has been performed many times and is enduringly popular on record.
-Wikipedia