This obscure French label stereo reissue of an original Omega recording from the 60s is SUPERB SOUNDING, without a doubt the best sound I have ever heard for the work. [The stereo is much better these days than it was years ago when we auditioned other pressings, so comparisons with those other, older records are practically pointless.]
And the performance is Top Notch as well; I know of none better.
This is a piece that is difficult to fit onto a single LP, clocking in at around 45 minutes, which means that the mastering engineer has three options when cutting the record: compress the dynamics, lower the level, or filter the deep bass. Fortunately it seems that none of those approaches were taken by the engineer who cut this record in the early ’80s — there’s plenty of punchy deep bass, as well as powerful dynamics, and the levels seem fine. How he do it? Beats me. Glad he did though!
Side One
A++ Super Hot Stamper sound from top to bottom. The strings are BIG, sweet, clear and textured — the kind of strings that one might hear on maybe one out of thirty or forty classical recordings.
We might prefer them a bit richer, and they can get a bit shrill when at their loudest, but considering how important the strings are to the success of this work, one must be thankful that they are as good as they are.
Side Two
Side two manages to convey more of that richness we were looking for in the strings on side one, but is a bit more recessed and not quite as wide in its soundstaging as we heard there. The sound is clear and open and wonderfully smooth.
And the bottom is BIG — the tympani and lower strings are powerful and dynamic. You will have a hard time finding better sound in the lower registers for this work, most of the pressings we’ve played were simply too anemic to take seriously. (Let’s face it: the average classical LP is hardly listenable.)
Super Hot Stampers again — a great Symphonie Fantastique played to perfection.
Symphonie Fantastique
Symphonie Fantastique: Épisode de la vie d’un Artiste…en cinq parties (Fantastic Symphony: An Episode in the Life of an Artist, in Five Parts), Op. 14, is a Program symphony written by the French composer Hector Berlioz in 1830. It is one of the most important and representative pieces of the early Romantic period, and is still very popular with concert audiences worldwide. The first performance took place at the Paris Conservatoire in December 1830. The work was repeatedly revised between 1831 and 1845 and subsequently became a favourite in Paris.
The symphony is a piece of program music which tells the story of “an artist gifted with a lively imagination” who has “poisoned himself with opium” in the “depths of despair” because of “hopeless love.” Berlioz provided his own program notes for each movement of the work (see below). He prefaces his notes with the following instructions:[1]
The composer’s intention has been to develop various episodes in the life of an artist, in so far as they lend themselves to musical treatment. As the work cannot rely on the assistance of speech, the plan of the instrumental drama needs to be set out in advance. The following programme must therefore be considered as the spoken text of an opera, which serves to introduce musical movements and to motivate their character and expression.
There are five movements, instead of the four movements which were conventional for symphonies at the time:
Rêveries – Passions (Daydreams – Passions)
Un bal (A ball)
Scène aux champs (Scene in the Country)
Marche au supplice (March to the Scaffold)
Songe d’une nuit de sabbat (Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath)
Wikipedia
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.
The term “Hot Stampers” gets thrown around a lot these days, but to us it means only one thing: a record that has been through the shootout process and found to be of exceptionally high quality.
The result of our labor is the hundreds of titles seen here, every one of which is unique and guaranteed to be the best sounding copy of the album you have ever heard or you get your money back.
Further Reading
Audiophile Quality Pressings of Orchestral Music Available Now
