Hot Stamper Pressings on Decca & London Available Now
The London and Decca original pressings of Decca’s recordings are the best sounding, right?
Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t.
We were a bit surprised that some of the (expensive) originals didn’t sound very good to us in recent shootouts.
Bad vinyl, bad mastering, who knows why so many early copies suffer from thick, dull and veiled sound?
The Stereo Treasury pressing of Maag’s 1958 recording you see here is shockingly good in many ways. It sure doesn’t sound like a budget reissue.
If anything it sounds more original than the originals we played against it!
It’s yet another remarkable disc from the Golden Age of Vacuum Tube Recording Technology, with the benefit of mastering by means of the modern cutting equipment of the mid- to late- ’60s. (We are of course here referring to the good modern mastering of many years ago, not the bad modern mastering of today.)
The combination of old and new works wonders on this title, as you will surely hear for yourself on both of these Super Hot or better sides.
You Need This Music
Everyone needs a good Rossini Overtures – the music is exciting and fun, not to mention Demonstration Quality on a pressing such as this.
The performances by Gamba on London and Reiner on RCA can also be very good, with excellent sound to be sure, but the combination of sound and performance on the best of the Maag-led Londons could not be equaled.
Certainly not by the pressings we had on hand; there may be better out there but we have not been fortunate enough to chance upon them.)
Note that the orchestra is none other than the Paris Conservatoire, whose playing of the famously demanding Stravinsky Rite of Spring, under Monteux (LSC 2085), is absolutely stunning as well.
Side One
Rich, clear, huge, with powerful brass and weighty tympani, this side was doing what few recordings — of any music — are capable of doing. The deep bass is phenomenal, the overall energy more like the live performance than the typical compressed orchestral recording.
The rich, smooth, Tubey Magical Decca sound is exactly what is called for with this music.
As good as our original Londons were, the STS remastering from less than ten years later (1967?) takes the recording to another level.
Side Two
Every bit as good in the quieter passages. It’s rich and smooth, and the loudest passages play cleaner after a minute or two (as is often the case).
String Tone
The rich, textured, rosin-on-the-bow lower strings on this record are to die for. Find me a modern record that sounds like this and I will eat it. And by “modern record” we hasten to include both modern recordings and modern remasterings of older recordings. No one alive today can make a record that sounds even remotely as good as this.
To call it a lost art is to understand something that few vinyl-loving audiophiles appear to have grasped since the advent of the Modern Reissue, which is simply this: they can’t begin to compete.
After twenty years of trying and literally hundreds of failed examples the engineers of today have yet to make a record that sounds as powerful and life-like as this London from almost fifty years ago.
Fortunately for the both of us we are not trying to make a record that sounds the way this one does. We’re just trying to find it, and folks, we found the hell out of this one.
Side One
William Tell Overture
Cinderella Overture
Side Two
Semiramide Overture
The Thieving Magpie Overture
Further Reading