_Composers – Saint-Saens

Everything But The Beer / Arthur Fiedler Conducts A Boston Pops Concert

More Classical and Orchestral Recordings

More Living Stereo Recordings

  • These original Shaded Dog pressings boast big, bold, and dynamic Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) Living Stereo sound from first note to last – just shy of our Shootout Winner (side four actually won the shootout)
  • Compared to practically every other copy we played — on all four sides mind you — these sides are richer, fuller, and livelier. They’re also more open and transparent, with notably improved clarity, less smear, and better bass
  • The rich, textured sheen of the strings that Living Stereo made possible in the 50s and early 60s is clearly evident throughout these pieces, something that the Heavy Vinyl crowd will never experience, because that sound just does not exist on modern records
  • We have been trying to do this title for at least ten years – clean originals are hard to find and that is a reality that will not be going away anytime soon

Much of what’s good about Golden Age recordings is here, with these sides having the sound of a huge hall and that Three-Dimensional quality that the best vintage recordings convey so well.

We constantly knock Heavy Vinyl here at Better Records for the simple reason that we play vintage recordings such as these by the score every month and can hear what they do. Unfortunately the huge hall and the 3-D soundstaging they effortlessly reproduce cannot be found on any Heavy Vinyl pressing we know of.

Such qualities allow this record to sound — in some ways, to be sure not all — like live music. 

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Saint-Saens / Symphony No. 3 (“Organ”) / Fremaux

More of the music of Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921)

More Classical and Orchestral Recordings

  • Clear and transparent and natural – your ability to suspend disbelief requires practically no effort at all
  • What this copy did better than practically any other was show us just how rich, smooth and Tubey Magical 1973 EMI sound could be
  • “The whole work is a magnificent and fantastical symphonic machine that’s an apotheosis of the orchestral technology of the late 19th century.”
  • There are about 150 orchestral recordings we’ve awarded the honor of offering the Best Performances with the Highest Quality Sound, and this record certainly deserve a place on that list.

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Saint-Saens / Symphony No. 3 / Fremaux

More of the music of Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921)

More Classical and Orchestral Recordings

  • A superb British import of one of Saint-Saens’ greatest masterpieces, with outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound from start to finish
  • Clear and transparent and natural – your ability to suspend disbelief requires practically no effort at all
  • To be clear, the Greensleeves pressings do not win shootouts, but that doesn’t mean they don’t come close
  • If you’re looking for an excellent performance of the symphony with superb sound, it’s hard to go wrong here
  • “The whole work is a magnificent and fantastical symphonic machine that’s an apotheosis of the orchestral technology of the late 19th century.”
  • There are about 150 orchestral recordings we’ve awarded the honor of offering the Best Performances with the Highest Quality Sound, and this recording certainly deserve a place on that list.

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Witches’ Brew on Classic Records and How Crazy Wrong We Were, Part Two

Hot Stamper Living Stereo Classical and Orchestral Titles Available Now

As I noted in Part One of this commentary, I promised to find my old blurb for the Classic pressing of Witches’ Brew from the catalog I sent out for years in the mid-’90s.

Well, I found it.

The excerpt from the earlier commentary seen below gets to the heart of the problem with my (embarrassing) review.

“With an old school audio system you will continue to be fooled by bad records, just as I and all my audio buds were fooled thirty and forty years ago. Audio has improved immensely in that time. If you’re still playing Heavy Vinyl and Audiophile pressings, there’s a world of sound you’re missing. We would love to help you find it.”

Ouch.

I apparently had one of those systems in the ’90s, because my system sure wasn’t doing a very good job of showing me how awful the Classic pressing of Witches’ Brew was.

Also, my guess that the Classic pressing was 10db more dynamic is risible. That number was clearly plucked out of thin air by someone who didn’t know what he was talking about (10db is a lot).

I will take some solace from my comment that  “90% of the magic of the original is here,” which means that even in 1994 I could hear that Bernie’s cutting system had problems reproducing the Tubey Magical Living Stereo sound that was all the rage at the time, mostly owing to Harry Pearson’s listing so many RCAs on his Super Disc List.

And, although we still like Gibson’s reading of the work, these days our favorite performance of Danse Macabre is this one on EMI, one we only discovered about five years ago. It’s one advantage to being in the record business. You get to play lots and lots of records, and playing large numbers of records is practically the only way to find the ones that are even better than the ones you know.

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Saint-Saens / Symphony No. 3 – The Mehta Would Not Make the Grade Today

More of the music of Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921)

Our favorite performance of this magnificent work is the Fremaux on EMI from 1973

This is an old review from 2011. I doubt we would have anything nice to say about this recording these days. Our system has come a long way since then, and these Mehta Londons have revealed themselves to be much more artificial sounding than we thought they were, or, more accurately, could tell they were back in 2011.

Unlike many audiophiles and the reviewers who write for them, we have never been enamored with the recordings Zubin Mehta made with the LA Philharmonic.

They almost always suffer from exactly the same problems that we heard on this album.

We had about five copies on hand in preparation for a shootout, some of which I had noted seemed to sound fine, but once we started listening more critically we heard the problems that eventually caused us to abandon the shootout and give away the stock to our good customers for free.

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Ravel, Saint-Saens et al. / Tzigane, Havanaise / Kyung-Wha Chung

Hot Stamper Orchestral Imports on Decca & London

This 1979 London original English pressing of violin showpieces (reviewed in 2012) has Super Hot Stamper sound on side two, which came as a bit of a shock to us after playing side one, which is as congested and opaque as one would expect from such a late London recording.

A great many Decca recordings from the Seventies are not to our liking, for reasons we lay out here.

Side two is fabulous — full-bodied, rich and sweet. Even though it may have been recorded in 1977, the engineer is Kenneth Wilkinson, and the hall is Kingsway — not many bad recordings can be attributed to either.    

But bad mastering or bad pressing quality are surely not the fault of either. When the record doesn’t come out of the oven right, the sound is going to suffer, and the sound on this side one is insufferable all right.

But side two is GLORIOUS, with wonderful music played with skill and feeling. (more…)

Saint-Saens / Piano Concerto No. 2 – Real Living Stereo Magic

More of the music of Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921)

More Classical and Orchestral Recordings

  • This superb TAS List Piano Concerto recording finally arrives on the site with outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound and vinyl that’s about as quiet and scratch-free as we can find it
  • With huge amounts of hall space, weight and energy, this is DEMO DISC QUALITY SOUND by any standard
  • Some old record collectors (like me) say classical recording quality ain’t what it used to be – here’s all the proof anyone with two working ears and top quality audiophile equipment needs to make the case
  • If you love this famous piano concerto as much as we do, this is surely a classic from 1958 that belongs in your collection.
  • The complete list of titles from 1958 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

Harry Pearson put this recording on his TAS List of Super Disc LPs, and with good reason — the sound is wonderfully relaxed and natural. This Shaded Dog pressing is exceptionally lively and dynamic. The sound is BIG and BOLD, enough to fill up your listening room and then some. The piano is clean and clear, and the strings are rich and textured.

The great Artur Rubinstein’s performance of these wonderful works is superb.

Our Shaded Dog pressing here offers plenty of Living Stereo Magic. This wonderful record boasts a natural orchestral perspective and superb string tone. It also presents the listener with a correctly-sized piano, which is fairly unusual for Rubinstein’s recordings. (more…)

Bizet / Saint-Saens / Gounod, et al. – Ballet Highlights From French Opera

More of the Music of Georges Bizet

    • With top grades on both sides, this original Mercury stereo pressing of these renowned ballet works features some of the BEST sound we’ve heard from Paray
    • Listen to the lush strings and the weighty, rich sound on the Massenet piece on side two – that is the sound of a shootout winning pressing
    • The Ballet Music from Faust may just give the impossibly rare RCA (LSC 2449) a run for its money in terms of sound and performance
    • Vibrant orchestrations, top quality sound and scratch-free surfaces combine for an astounding listening experience
    • This spectacular Demo Disc recording is big, clear, rich, dynamic, transparent and energetic – HERE is the sound we love
    • If you’re a fan of delightful orchestral showpieces such as these ballet highlights, this LP from 1961 belongs in your collection
    • The complete list of titles from 1961 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

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Prokofiev / Saint-Saëns – Peter and the Wolf / Carnival of the Animals

More of the music of Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

More of the music of Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)

  • With two top sides, this early Wideband UK stereo London pressing had the sound we were looking for
  • This Demo Disc Quality recording has wonderful sound for both of these works, bettering our favorites from years past
  • Like so many of the top Deccas from this era, the sound is big, clear, rich, dynamic, transparent and energetic
  • Here you will find some of the best orchestral Hot Stamper sound we offer
  • The sound of the orchestra is dramatically richer and sweeter than you will hear on any other performance or pressing of the work — we would expect nothing else from Decca’s engineers working in Kingsway Hall
  • If you’re a fan of orchestral showpieces such as these, this Decca recording from 1960 belongs in your collection.
  • The complete list of titles from 1960 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.
  • More Reviews and Commentaries for Peter and the Wolf

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Rabin / The Magic Bow – Another TAS List Oversight?

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin

Reviews and Commentaries for TAS Super Disc Recordings

This original Capitol record with Michael Rabin is ONE OF THE VERY BEST VIOLIN RECORDINGS we have ever played here at Better Records. The sound is OUT OF THIS WORLD! The immediacy of the violin tone is unbelievable — Rabin is in the room with you throughout the entirety of the record in a way that few recordings in our experience could hope to equal.

What more can we say, other than the music is every bit as good as the sound. If you love the Classical Romantic period, and who doesn’t?, these selections will have you in a world of sound and music rarely matched by anything but the best in live performance.

Another TAS List Oversight

This is another record that is not on the TAS List, but would certainly take top honors in a head to head shootout with any of the violin works to be found there.

This is an Older Classical/Orchestral Review

Most of the older reviews you see are for records that did not go through the shootout process, the revolutionary approach to finding better sounding pressings we started developing in the early 2000s and have since turned into a veritable science.

We found the records you see in these older listings by cleaning and playing a pressing or two of the album, which we then described and priced based on how good the sound and surfaces were. (For out Hot Stamper listings, the Sonic Grades and Vinyl Playgrades are listed separately.)

We were often wrong back in those days, something we have no reason to hide. Audio equipment and record cleaning technologies have come a long way since those darker days, a subject we discuss here.

Currently, 99% (or more!) of the records we sell are cleaned, then auditioned under rigorously controlled conditions, up against a number of other pressings. We award them sonic grades, and then condition check them for surface noise.

As you may imagine, this approach requires a great deal of time, effort and skill, which is why we currently have a highly trained staff of about ten. No individual or business without the aid of such a committed group could possibly dig as deep into the sound of records as we have, and it is unlikely that anyone besides us could ever come along to do the kind of work we do.

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