_Composers – Debussy

Debussy & Ravel – A Tale of Two Top Copies

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Claude Debussy Available Now

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Maurice Ravel Available Now

In 2024 we did a shootout for this recording of quartets, LSC 2413, our first in 19 years.

For the shootout winning pressing, we wrote the following:

Juilliard String Quartet’s performance of these wonderful classical works appears on the site for only the second time ever, here with INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades on both sides of this original Shaded Dog pressing.

Having just played some killer copies of Death and the Maiden, we’re tempted to say that this Debussy record has the potential for even better sound — it’s richer and sweeter, but every bit as real and immediate as any chamber recording we know of.

Here are the notes for the actual record we played. Side one really blew our minds, earning a grade of at least 3+.

The second place finisher may not have been quite as good on side one, but it was still so good that it had no problem earning the full three pluses. It had the same stampers as the copy above by the way.

Side two however lacked the space of the very best pressings we played, and we marked it down one half plus for that shortcoming. Although it was “so tubey and 3-D” it did not have “all the space but not hot at all and natural and sweet.”

It’s very unlikely that the person who bought this copy would feel there was any problem with side two. We had two killer side two’s to play against each other back to back, and that’s about the only way these kinds of very subtle differences can be recognized, assuming you have a system that can resolve the space of the recording at an extremely high level to begin with.

The big rooms with high ceilings that systems like those require are not usually found in listening rooms that have not been custom built.

More on this wonderful record:

The Living Stereo sound here is Tubey Magical, lively and clear, with the kind of transparency that puts living, breathing musicians right in your listening room in the way that only the best vintage vinyl pressings can.

Lewis Layton engineered this recording (along with Ed Begley) and he nailed it, perfectly capturing the rich, textured sheen on the strings, the hallmark of Living Stereo sound in the 50s and 60s.

He recorded both the Schubert (LSC 2378) mentioned above and this wonderful Debussy/Ravel record for RCA in 1960 — it would be quite the understatement to say he had a gift for recordings of this kind.

Another superb recording from the 60s, brought to you by your vinyl-loving friends at Better Records.

It’s an exceptional Living Stereo all analog recording from 1960 – nothing else sounds like it.

When you’ve played as many Living Stereo titles as we have (250+ and counting), you’re bound to run into this kind of Demo Disc sound from time to time – it’s what makes record collecting fun.

It’s an amazing find, the kind of record we live for here at Better Records.

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Debussy – La Mer / Ansermet

More of the music of Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

  • A vintage Decca import pressing of these wonderful orchestral pieces that was doing just about everything right, with both sides earning seriously good Double Plus (A++) grades
  • La Mer is on side one and it is lovely – rich and sweet, tonally correct, dynamic, and extended on the top and the bottom
  • Two other major works found on this compilation are Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and Clair De Lune
  • The richness of the strings is displayed here beautifully for fans of the classical Golden Age – it’s practically impossible to hear that kind of string sound on any recording made in the last thirty years
  •  When you hear how good this record sounds, you may have a hard time believing that it’s a budget reissue from 1972, but that’s precisely what it is. Even more extraordinary, the right copies are the ones that win shootouts

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Saint-Saens / Chabrier / Danse Macabre / Espana and More

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

More of the music of Emmanual Chabrier (1841-1894)

  • An outstanding EMI import pressing of these sublime orchestral works with Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last
  • Both of these sides are bigger and richer than most of what we played – they’re super clean and clear, tonally correct from top to bottom, and have all of the weight of the orchestra down low
  • If you want a classical record to test your system and demo your system, this copy is for you!
  • This Demo Disc Quality recording should be part of any serious Orchestral Music Collection. Others that belong in that category can be found here.
  • There are about 150 orchestral recordings we think offer the best performances with the highest quality sound. This record is certainly deserving of a place on that list.

Orchestral Showpieces

Who can resist these sublime orchestral works? To quote an infamous (around here) label, “they are an audiophile’s dream come true.”

The sound is clear, with wonderful depth to the stage. These recordings may just be the ideal blend of clarity and richness, with depth and spaciousness that will put to shame 98% of the classical recordings ever made.

Clean bottom and lower mids. Zero smear. They’re so full-bodied and rich, yet clear and clean, and spread out on such a huge stage, these sides may become your go-to reference disc for Orchestral Reproduction.

One More Thing

This is the kind of record that will make you want to take all your Heavy Vinyl classical pressings and put them in storage. None of them, I repeat: not a single one of them, can ever begin to sound the way this record sounds. (The worst of them can be found here. If these 30-odd Heavy Vinyl titles sound good to you, something is definitely wrong somewhere.)

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Who Can Explain Why This Cheap Reissue Sounds So Good?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Claude Debussy Available Now

This Decca reissue is spacious, open, transparent, rich and sweet.

Roy Wallace was the engineer for these sessions from 1955 to 1962 in Geneva’s glorious sounding Victoria Hall. His work here is superb in all respects.

It’s yet another remarkable disc from the Golden Age of Vacuum Tube Recording, with the added benefit of mastering using more modern, but apparently still good, cutting equipment from the ’70s, 1972 to be exact.

We are of course here referring to the often amazing modern mastering of 40+ years ago, not the mediocre-at-best 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 superb sides.

We were impressed with the fact that it excelled in so many areas of reproduction. The illusion of disappearing speakers is one of the more attractive aspects of the sound here, pulling the listener into the space of the concert hall in an especially engrossing way.

Thread It Up and Just Hit Play Already

What might be seen as odd — odd to some audiophiles but not to us — was how rich and Tubey Magical the reissue can be on the best copies.

This leads me to think that most of the natural, full-bodied, smooth, sweet sound of the album is on the tape, and that all one has to do to get that vintage sound on to a record is simply to thread up the master on a good machine and hit play.

The fact that nobody seems to be able to make an especially good sounding record these days makes clear that in fact I’m wrong to think that this approach would work. It seems to me that somebody should be able to figure out how to do it. In our experience that is simply not the case today, and has not been for many years.

Old Tapes, New Tapes

The master tapes were about fifteen years old when this record was mastered.

Compare that to a current cutting which would be made from approximately fifty year old tapes.

Perhaps that explains it.

Or maybe it doesn’t.

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Debussy & Ravel / Julliard String Quartet

More of the Music of Claude Debussy

More of the Music of Maurice Ravel

  • An original Shaded Dog pressing of the famous Juilliard String Quartet’s performance of these wonderful classical works (one of only a handful of copies to ever hit the site), here with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them from first note to last
  • Having just played some killer copies of Death and the Maiden, we’re tempted to say that this Debussy record has the potential for even better sound – it’s richer and sweeter, but every bit as real and immediate as any chamber recording we know of
  • The Living Stereo sound here is Tubey Magical, lively and clear, with the kind of transparency that puts living, breathing musicians right in your listening room in the way that only the best vintage vinyl pressings can
  • Lewis Layton engineered this recording (along with Ed Begley) and he nailed it, perfectly capturing the rich, textured sheen on the strings, the hallmark of Living Stereo sound in the 50s and 60s
  • He recorded both the Schubert (LSC 2378) mentioned above and this wonderful Debussy/Ravel record (LSC 2413) for RCA in 1960 — it would be quite the understatement to say he had quite a gift for recordings of this kind

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Forget the STS Labels with Black Print on Images Pour Orchestra

More of the music of Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

None of the pressings on this later Stereo Treasury label that we played in our most recent shootouts were very good, unlike the Silver Print labels, which can sound quite respectable.

At this stage of the game, we’ve learned our lesson and will not be giving any more of the Black Label pressings a chance. This goes for practically all the records we’ve played on the later Stereo Treasury label. They rarely sound any good and just aren’t worth the trouble now that we know what the best pressings are.

Both the Ansermet on London and the Munch on RCA are better recordings, but both sell for quite a bit more money than the Stereo Treasury pressings we offer, so if you can’t see spending the kind of bread they command, there is a much more affordable alternative that is guaranteed to satisfy.

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Side One of Ritual Fire Dance 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. Years ago we noted that:

Columbia classical recordings have a tendency to be shrill, upper-midrangy, glary and hard sounding. The upper mids are often nasally and pinched; the strings and brass will screech and blare at you in the worst way. If Columbia’s goal was to drive the audiophile classical music lover screaming from the room (or, more realistically, induce a strong desire to call it a day record-playing wise), most of the time one would have to grant they’ve succeeded brilliantly. Occasionally they fail. When they do we call those pressings Hot Stampers.

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

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 and real as one might wish.

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

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Debussy / La Mer / Haitink

The Music of Claude Debussy Available Now

This is an older review. When we revisited this title recently, we felt it was badly lacking in Tubey Magic, a real deal killer for us here at Better Records.

It’s a decent sounding record, not much more than that, but it does have a top performance. If you see one for cheap in the bins, pick it up and give it a spin.

We prefer Ansermet’s performances for Decca of both La Mer and Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.

Our review for the album from years ago can be seen below. As for other records we think we got wrong — we may change our minds again! — you can find more under the heading of Live and Learn.

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On LSC 2222, How Does the Classic Records Heavy Vinyl Compare?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Claude Debussy Available Now

In 2005 we played an excellent original pressing of Debussy’s Iberia (LSC 2222) and compared it to the Classic Records reissue. We wrote:

This is a wonderful sounding Shaded Dog pressing. Side two is especially dynamic.

This has long been considered one of the Living Stereo triumphs. The spaciousness and tonal correctness are legendary.  However, this copy does not have the prodigious bass of some that I’ve heard.

The Classic reissue has plenty of deep bass, but it’s shrill and hard and altogether unpleasant, so the better bass comes at a steep price.

For better sounding recordings of Iberia, we know of two and they can be found by clicking here.

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Rachmaninoff / Favorite Classics for Piano / Pennario

More of the music of Franz Liszt (1811-1880)

More Classical ‘Sleeper” Records We’ve Discovered

We found White Hot Stamper sound on side two of this solo piano recording.

It’s big, rich and above all REAL sounding, with natural studio space. The legendary soloist Leonard Pennario is presented here at the height of his powers.

Superb choice of material, from Clair De Lune to Liebestraum to the Hungarian Rhapsody No . 2.

On the rare Stereo pressing of course — we want to hear all that studio space reproduced, just as your two ears would have heard it (more or less).

Side One

Graded Super Hot for the huge, solid-sounding piano, played with such verve and skill. The musical power on this side is stupendous. 

Side Two

Even better! No smear, with incredible clarity, and no sacrifice in weight or richness.

All of which adds up to a top quality piano recording in every way.

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