Focus-Classical

Here we offer insights into classical and orchestral recordings we think we know well.

Side One Had Tubey Colorations Missing from Side Two

Hot Stamper Pressings of Vintage Columbia Albums Available Now

An undiscovered gem from 1967 on the 360 Columbia label.

Side two of this record blew our minds with its White Hot Stamper sound.

Musically and sonically this record is nothing short of wonderful.

Who knew? You could play fifty vintage piano recordings and not find one as good as this.

Tchaikovsky, Liszt, Beethoven, Debussy, Mozart — these shorter pieces and excerpts were composed by those with the greatest gift for melody, men who’ve produced works that have stood the test of time, enchanting audiences over the centuries with works of such beauty and charm.

Here at Better Records we have never been fans of Columbia classical LPs. To be clear, the fault more often than not has to be in the mastering, not the recording. We’ve raved about so many great copies of titles in the past, only to find that the next three or four LPs we pick up of the very same titles sound godawful.

There are some amazing Bernstein recordings out there, but the amount of work it takes to find the one that sounds good is overwhelming — how can such great recordings be mastered so poorly so often?

Side One

A++, with a huge, rich, sweet, natural sounding piano. The more you listen, the more apparent it becomes that, as natural as it may seem at first blush, there are still some old school tubey colorations that make the sound not quite as lifelike as one might wish.

And the confirmation of that finding comes as soon as you flip the record over.

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The Bloated Cello Sound Some Find Appealing

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Claude Debussy Available Now

UPDATE 2026

We made a crack about the Starker Mercury recordings below which we gernerally no longer agree with, although I am sure there are some pressings which have bloated sound. Those are the ones that don’t win shootouts.

On this pressing we were a bit surprised at how natural the cello sounded — more like the real instrument and less like the typical recording of it. 

Normally when recording the cello, the microphones are placed fairly close to the instrument. This often results in what’s known as the “proximity effect,” which simply describes a boost in the lower frequencies relative to the more linear response of the microphone when placed at a distance.

The famous Starker cello recordings on Mercury — you know the ones, the originals and even the reissues sell for hundreds and hundreds of dollars — suffer from this effect, which audiophiles seem to prefer. (The Mercury heavy vinyl reissues, at least the ones I’ve played, were ridiculously fat and bloated in the bottom.)

Audiophiles did not seem to mind much, judging by the apparently strong sales and the rave reviews I read. Bass shy systems, and that means most of the systems owned by audiophiles, probably benefited from the bass boost.

Systems with lots of large woofers — at least in our case — would of course make the sound of these pressings positively unbearable. That indeed was our experience.

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The Best Espana on Record?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Chabrier Available Now

UPDATE 2026

The part down below about Londons numbered from 6400 to 6500 being superior is not something we would agree with any longer.

UPDATE 2021

Ansermet’s performance of Espana is still our favorite — nothing in our experience can touch it, musically or sonically.

As of 2022 we slightly prefer the famous Argenta recording for Decca that’s on the TAS List, CS 6006.

Both are wonderful and both belong in any serious audiophile collection of orchestral music.

We created a special section for recordings of this quality. Classical and orchestral records that we’ve auditioned and found to have the best performances with the highest quality sound can be found here.

This has been a favorite recording of ours here at Better Records for a very long time, since at least the mid-’90s or thereabouts. We’ve mentioned how much we like the sound of Londons with catalog numbers ranging from about 6400 to 6500 or so (which are simply Decca recordings from the mid-’60s), and this one (CS 6438) is one of the best reasons to hold that view.

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What We Think We Know about Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6

More of the Music of Ludwig van Beethoven

In our opinion this is the best sounding Beethoven 6th Symphony ever recorded. It is the most beautiful of them all, and has long been my personal favorite of the nine Beethoven composed.

Ansermet’s performance is clearly definitive to my ear as well. The gorgeous hall the Suisse Romande recorded in was possibly the best recording venue of its day, possibly of all time; more amazing sounding recordings were made there than any other hall we know of.

There is a richness to the sound that exceeds 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 and the timbral accuracy of the instruments in every section.

We have a section of classical recordings that we nominate for the best performances with top quality sound, and this record is of course one of its founding members.

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Five Major Problem Areas in Audio

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Prokofiev Available Now

UPDATE 2026

There was a time, perhaps ten years ago, that many EMI pressings finally started to sound a lot better to us than they had in the early- to mid-2000s when this commentary was written.

(2007 was the year everything changed, but it wasn’t 2007 yet. After being deep into audio for close to thirty years, it wasn’t until a few years later that we learned we still had a long way to go.)

Nowadays we can say that we are proud to offer some truly outstanding recordings conducted by Previn, Fremaux and others for EMI.

What to listen for on this album?

That’s easy: The all-too-common 70s EMI harshness and shrillness.

We could never understand why audiophiles revered EMI the way they did back in the 70s. Harry Pearson loved many of their recordings, but I sure didn’t. 

The longer I stay in this hobby, the more clear it becomes that many of the records on the TAS list are better suited to the old school audio equipment of the 60s rather than the modern approach to audio that is possible today thanks to the many revolutionary changes to every aspect of music reproduction that have come along in the last thirty years or so.

(Obviously there are plenty of audio systems from every era that, for all appearances, seem unlikely to reproduce music well, which goes a long way in explaining most of the rampant enthusiasm for the modern Heavy Vinyl pressing.)

These kinds of records used to sound good on those older systems, and I should know, I had an old school stereo even into the 90s. Some of the records that sounded good to me back then don’t sound too good to me anymore.

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Pictures at an Exhibition – An Overview

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Mussorgsky Available Now

There is a slightly multi-miked quality to this recording. If you’ve been playing true Golden Age records all day you will notice that the instruments are more naturally and correctly spaced and sized on those recordings.

But, this is still a KNOCKOUT record which is guaranteed to bring any stereo to its knees. The dynamics, the deep bass and the sheer power of the orchestra have to be heard to be believed.

What does the typical EMI pressing of this album sound like?

Not good. Sour brass, smeary or shrill strings, lacking in bass — mid-hall dead-as-a-doornail sound is fairly typical.

Almost all the copies I’ve played are spacious, but so what?

The sound of the instruments is often wrong and in my book that trumps any benefits concerning soundstaging or depth.

But the best Hot Stamper pressings give you the presence and immediacy you need to get involved in the work.

The strings on the better copies have rosiny texture.

The brass has weight — not the full measure of an RCA or London recording, but at least you get the impression that those instruments are trying to sound correct.

And the bass drum really goes deep, unlike many of the Golden Age recordings I’ve heard.

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Holst and Previn – A Planets for the Ages

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Holst Available Now

Fortunately for audiophiles who love The Planets but are disappointed by most performances, a group that includes us to be sure, the amazing sound found on this copy is coupled with a superb performance.

As you might imagine, on a big system this would make for a powerful listening experience, which is exactly the experience we ourselves had during our recent shootout. This copy actually deserves its place on the TAS List.

The brass is so BIG and POWERFUL on EMI’s recording that other orchestras and recordings frankly pale in comparison. Until I heard one of our top EMI pressings show me brass with this kind of weight and energy, I simply had no idea it was even possible to play the work this powerfully. The lower brass comes in, builds, gaining volume and weight, then calms down, but soon returns and builds relentlessly, ever and ever louder. Eventually the trumpets break out, blasting their way forward and above the melee the heavier brass has created below.

Quite honestly I have never heard anything like it, and I heard this work in concert in late 2012! In live performance, the members of the brass section, being at the back of the stage, were at least 100 feet away from me, perhaps more. When playing the best EMI pressings, the brass were right there in front of me, eight to ten feet away. In a way this is of course unnatural, but that fact takes nothing away from the subjective power of the experience.

Only the conductor can stand at the podium, but the EMI producers and engineers (the two Christophers in this case) have managed to put the listener, at least in this movement, right there with him.

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The Planets – Can You Imagine Sound this Bad from a TAS List Super Disc?

Hot Stamper Classical and Orchestral Pressings Available Now

We can, we played it.

Or, to be more correct, we played them. Two pressings, each with one good side and one very bad side.

UPDATE 2025

Take all of this with a very large grain of salt. In the course of doing more shootouts for the Mehta Planets, we’ve played quite a number of different pressings and now believe — believe being the operative word — we know which are the best stampers.

It is very unlikely that any Dutch pressing would be competitive with the best UK-pressed copies cut by Harry Fisher.

For those of you who just want a good sounding copy of The Planets to play and enjoy, our favorite by far is Previn’s reading on EMI from 1974.

We know of no better performance, and we much prefer the dramatically more natural sound quality.

The Mehta recording, like much of what he recorded for Decca in those days, is a multi-miked mess, the kind we grew out of (for the most part) a long time ago. (More of the multi-miked records we’ve auditioned, of varying quality to be sure, can be found here.)

Our old commentary (please excuse the heavy-handed caps):

This 2-pack from many years ago (ten fifteen perhaps), described below, boasts White Hot Stamper sound on side two for the Mehta Planets. Yes, it IS possible. Side two shows you what this record is actually capable of — big WHOMP, no SMEAR, super SPACIOUS, DYNAMIC, with an EXTENDED top.

It beat every London pressing we threw at it, coming out on top for our shootout. Folks, we 100% guarantee that whatever pressing you have of this performance, this copy will trounce it.

But side one of this London original British pressing was awful.

We wrote it off as NFG after about a minute; that’s all we could take of the bright, hard-sounding brass of War.

If you collect Super Discs based on their catalog numbers and labels and preferred countries of manufacture, you are in big trouble when it comes time to play the damn things.

That approach doesn’t work for sound and never did.

If your stereo is any good, this is not news to you. The proof? The first disc in this 2-pack is Dutch. It earned a Super Hot grade in our blind test, beating every British copy we played against it save one. Side two however was recessed, dark and lifeless. Another NFG side, but the perfect complement to our White Hot British side two!

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For Arcana, Speed Is Key

Hot Stamper Pressings on Decca and London Available Now

This is a recording that allows your speakers to disappear completely like practically no other. A powerful Test Disc as well. Use this one to check your speed and staging, subtle changes in your equipment can have a big effect on recordings like this

Incredible sound for this CRAZY 20th Century music, featuring wild and wacky works which rely almost exclusively on percussion (not one, not two, but three bass drums!). My favorite piece here may be Ionisation, which uses real sirens (the Old School ones cranked by hand) as part of Varese’s uniquely specialized instrumental array.

But the main reason audiophiles will LOVE this album is not the music, but the SOUND. Ionisation has amazing depth, soundstaging, dynamics, three-dimensionality and absolutely dead-on tonality — it’s hard to imagine a recording that allows your speakers to disappear more completely than this one.

It also makes a superb test disc. Subtle changes in your equipment can have a big effect on recordings like this.

The instrumental palette is large and colorful, giving the critical listener plenty to work with.

And this copy is perfect for testing because is is nearly FLAWLESS in its sound. No other copy could touch it. Many copies are not especially transparent, spacious or three-dimensional, and lack extension on both ends of the frequency spectrum.

The SPEED of the percussion is also critical to its proper reproduction.

No two pieces of electronics will get this record to sound the same, and some will fail miserably.

If vintage tube gear is your idea of the ultimate in sound, this record may help you to better understand where its shortcomings lie.

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The Best Danse Macabre on Record

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Saint-Saens Available Now

Saint-Saens’ symphonic poem, Danse Macabre, the second piece on the second side, is the heart of the album and its raison d’être for us. This is where the real fireworks can be found, although that’s not really fair as there are fireworks aplenty on both sides.

What we have here is the best Danse Macabre we have ever played.

We have always been fans of Gibson’s performance on the legendary Witches’ Brew. As good as that recording may be, this one is clearly superior in practically every way — it’s bigger, clearer, richer, more resolving, more spacious, more real and, to my surprise, more EXCITING and involving.

If you own a copy of LSC 2225, hopefully not the awful Classic Records Heavy Vinyl pressing, you need to hear what Fremaux and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra have accomplished on this wonderful 70s EMI.

Audiophiles (especially those of us with large dynamic speakers) have always been drawn to the biggest and most exciting orchestral spectaculars, and we have plenty on the site at all times to satisfy the need to hear these kinds of records at their properly-mastered, properly-pressed best.

Why spend money on another underperforming modern reissue that you will end up rarely playing when much more powerful and involving sound can be found on our site, sound so good it has the potential to change your life.

Four Exceptional Orchestral Showpieces

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Dukas)

This piece opens the side. There is depth and richness to beat the band, as well as clarity and tonal correctness that let you forget the recording and just enjoy the music.

A superb performance as well, as good as any we know of. And the sound is the equal of the best recordings we’ve played.

Espana. Rhapsody For Orchestra (Chabrier)

As good as Fremaux is, I think the Ansermet (CS 6438) might still have the edge, but both are so good that it might just come down to a matter of taste. You cannot go wrong with either.

UPDATE 2023

And now we actually prefer the famous Argenta recording for Decca that’s on the TAS List, CS 6006.

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