Hot Stamper Pressings of Orchestral Spectaculars Available Now
UPDATE 2026
It just so happens that I had the time to listen to this work from start to finish twice just last night, 2/11/2026. Saw it performed live just a few months back at Atlanta Symphony Hall.
This wonderful work never gets old. Next time we do a shootout for the performance we like with Muti on EMI I hope you will see your way to picking up a copy. You won’t regret it.
The Classic Records repressings of Pictures at an Exhibition — whether at 33, 45, or any other speed, on one disc or four –are all godawful sounding.
(Yes, we have auditioned both versions, for as long as we could stand them, which wasn’t long as the sound was painfully bad. The details can be found below.)
Everything that was bad about the worst original Shaded Dog pressings not only hasn’t been fixed, it’s been made even worse!
Yes, we admit to having played a good pressing of LSC 2201 in 2024, but there are just too many bad pressings of the album to bother doing a shootout for it. It’s hard to justify the cost when so few have the sound we are looking for.
The shrillness, the hardness, the sourness, the loss of texture to the strings, the phony boosted deep bass — this is the kind of sound that makes my head hurt and my skin crawl. After a minute or two of listening to sound this bad I’ve had it.
And can you believe that HP put this miserable remastered pressing on his TAS Super Disc List? Sad but true.
What do you get with Hot Stampers compared to the Classic Heavy Vinyl reissue? Dramatically more warmth, sweetness, delicacy, transparency, space, energy, size, naturalness (no boost on the top end or the bottom, a common failing of anything on Classic); in other words, the kind of difference you almost ALWAYS get comparing the best vintage pressings with their modern remastered counterparts, in our experience anyway.
Now if you’re a Classic Records fan, and you like that brighter, more detailed, more aggressive sound, our Hot Stampers are probably not for you. We don’t like that sound and we don’t like most Classic Records. They may be clean and clear but where is the RCA LIVING STEREO Magic that made people swoon over these recordings in the first place? Bernie manages to clean that sound right off the record, and that’s just not our idea of hi-fidelity.
Our Hot Stamper Classical Pressings will be dramatically more transparent, open, clear and just plain REAL sounding than practically any record Classic Records ever made, if only because these are all the areas in which heavy vinyl pressings tend to fall short.
Pictures at an Exhibition – NPR Background by Ted Libby
As an orchestral showpiece – the form in which it is familiar to most listeners – Pictures at an Exhibition is two times over a work of enlargement. Moussorgsky’s original suite for piano, composed in 1874 as a memorial to the painter Victor Hartmann, took as its point of departure ten pictures displayed at a posthumous exhibition of the artist’s work. Though pianistically crude, Moussorgsky’s renderings of his friend’s images convey their rich fantasy with sincerity and great imaginative force. Ravel’s celebrated orchestration of Pictures at an Exhibition, undertaken in 1922 at the request of conductor Serge Koussevitzky, in turn faithfully amplifies both the wit and deep feeling of Moussorgsky’s tribute.
One is surprised, listening to the orchestral version, to discover that Hartmann’s originals were modest little sketches and watercolors. For example, the Ballet of Chicks in their Shells was inspired by a whimsical costume sketch for a children’s ballet. Moussorgsky had turned that into a lively scene painting, and Ravel’s scoring, with its clucking oboes and scurrying scale passages in the bassoon and strings, transforms the children in their eggshell costumes into real chicks.
The inspiration for The Hut on Fowl’s Legs came from a quaint design for a clock in the shape of cabin built on a chicken’s feet – the unlikely abode of the witch Baba Yaga. Moussorgsky decided to portray the legendary hag’s frightful ride through the air. Ravel marshals the heavy brass and a business like array of percussion to create a thunderous chase.
In The Great Gate of Kiev, the most breathtaking and at the same time most touching part of the suite, Moussorgsky apostrophized his departed friend with a monumental realization of Hartmann’s lopsided, ornately decorated drawing of a city gate in the old Russian style, with a cupola in the shape of a helmet surmounting the gatehouse. Based on the theme Moussorgsky called Promenade – which opens Pictures at an Exhibition and is meant to depict the viewer’s passing from one work to the next – this finale was the composer’s way of saying farewell and, at least in music, giving substance to one of his friend’s fondest dreams. In Ravel’s hands, Moussorgsky’s vision of a gate that was never built becomes one of the architectural wonders of the world, magnificently brought to life by full brass, pulsing strings, pealing bells, and triumphant cymbals.
Further Reading