_Composers – Mozart

Glazunov / Violin Concerto – A Classic Records Winner

Hot Stamper Pressings with Jascha Heifetz Performing

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin

This is a 180g Classic LP with very good sound, the best of the violin concertos Classic has released to date and one of the best Classic Records classical titles ever.

It’s one of the early 180 pressings which tend to be quieter than the later 200 gram pressings.

The Classic Records Liner Notes say:

Original pressings of this late Heifetz/Hendl/CSO performance tend to be edgy, which has been remedied on this reissue through cutting directly from the three-track masters by Bernie Grundman. Grundman has also tuned the balance between Heifetz and the Orchestra to better integrate the phenomenal bowing and intonation that Heifetz is famous for with the power of the Chicago Symphony. Another 10++ performance and recording – not to be missed! 

FURTHER READING

Classic Records – Classical (more…)

Glazounov and Mozart / Violin Concertos / Heifetz

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin

Super Hot Stamper sound on side two of this Shaded Dog pressing, which is the side with Mozart’s Symphonie Concertante for violin and viola. The sound is wonderful, with lovely 1964 RCA Living Stereo Tubey Magic, presenting the violin solidly with spot-on timbre.

Side one, the Glazounov, earned a nearly-as-good sonic grade of A+ to A++. The violin on this side is full-bodied and present just the way we like it.

Side Two

A++, the body of the violin is reproduced here especially well, along with the rosiny texture of the strings. This side is a bit smooth and dark compared to the best we played, so we are calling it Super Hot. Its faults are few, its strengths many.

Side One

A+ to A++. The orchestra is rich, but there is some Old School smear to the strings and an Old School lack of top end. Overall the sound is quite good within these limitations. (more…)

Letter of the Week – “It blows away my first pressing that I had heretofore revered.”

More of the Music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Mozart

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom,     

The Mozart is wonderful. It blows away my first pressing, flat edge hardboard cover opy that I had heretofore revered. Love it. A brilliant recording.

Phil

Phil,

Glad to hear it! We sold our original close to ten years ago [closer to 15 by now] so it’s good to know the later pressing that won our shootout can beat it. Those originals with the different cover are hard to find. We haven’t seen a clean copy in years.

Best, TP

Further Reading

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Mozart / Symphony Nos. 32 & 38 – Were We Wrong?

More of the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Many years ago we wrote the following review for CS 6107:

An exceptionally QUIET copy for an early Blueback pressing. The sound is old-fashioned Decca, which seems to suit this music quite well. The hall is reverberant, as it would have been in Mozart’s day, and the perspective is mid-hall. The string tone is excellent. Some of the louder passages might be a bit strained, but overall the sound is correct for this music. 

Maag and the LSO are of course Mozart experts and the performances here do not disappoint. A rare title and a lovely one.

More recently we got in a nice pressing that sounded OK, nothing special, even after a good cleaning.

Were we wrong years ago? Hard to say. That copy from many years ago is gone.

Three things we always keep in mind when a pressing doesn’t sound like we remember it did, or think it should:

  1. Our standards are quite a bit higher now, having spent decades critically listening to vintage classical pressings by the hundreds.
  2. Our stereo is dramatically more revealing and more accurate than it used to be.
  3. Since no two records sound the same, maybe the one from long ago actually did sound as good as we thought at the time.

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Mozart / Piano Concerto No. 27 / Backhaus / Bohm

Lovely music. Superb sound, one of the rarest of the London records. I haven’t seen one of these in close to twenty years. 

Performed with The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Karl Bohm, this record also features the Piano Sonata in A-major.

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.

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Organ Music From Westminster and Its 16 Cycle Note

More of the Music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The piece by Mozart on side one has a true 16 cycle note. Since it has virtually no overtones, the note is more often than not completely undetectable; few stereos in my experience have ever been able to reproduce it. If you have a full-range system, this record will allow you to hear deep bass you may have never heard before.

Let me warn you that these records require extremely transparent, full-bandwidth, neutral stereo systems to sound their best. Most records are “goosed up” in various ways to play on any stereo, regardless of quality. These are the opposite. From my admittedly prejudiced point of view, tubes are an absolute must for the magic of these live recordings to come through. [Or so I thought in 2006. Now, not so much.]

If your system leans more toward the budget side, these Fulton records will leave you wondering what in the world that Tom Port character was talking about.

And of course organ records require good deep bass, the hardest part of the frequency range to reproduce in the typical listening room. With this organ record at least you’ll know what the goal should be.

Mozart / Eine Kleine Nachtmusik / Walter – A Very Good Columbia Pressing

This Odyssey budget pressing has long been favorite of ours here at Better Records. It’s too bad that most of them don’t sound very good, with the shrill, hard string tone we’ve come to expect from Columbia in the ’60s. Fortunately this pressing does not have that problem! We played a number of these recently, and this copy was the best of them all on BOTH sides!

Side one is really rich and warm with lovely, smooth strings that don’t get shrill. It’s very hard to believe that there’s a much better sounding copy out there. Side one of course has the complete Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.    (more…)

Mozart / Mendelssohn / The Heifetz-Piatigorsky Concerts

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin

Superb Recordings with Jascha Heifetz Performing

Reviewed in 2011.

The Mozart side of this Red Seal pressing from 1975 sounds AMAZING. I have never heard better staging for a chamber work of this kind. All five instruments are so clearly set apart from each other and tonally correct (for the most part) that it is nothing less than fascinating to be able to follow each instrument as it weaves its way through the score.

If you’ve suffered through the horrendously sour and screechy recordings Heifetz and Piatigorsky are known for in audiophile circles — LDS 2513 and LDS 6159 — you will be glad to know that this side one sounds NOTHING like them.   

(Reversing your polarity on LDS 6159 helps but it can’t fix sound that’s that bad.)

Side one is, as we say, wonderfully clear and transparent. It does not have as much warmth and fullness as one might want, so for those of you who have plenty of tubey magic to bring to the recordings you play, this may just be the best chamber work you have ever heard. It is a touch hot in the 3-4k region but this is a minor quibble. Tons of recordings from this era are, including most RCAs and Mercuries; Deccas and Londons less so.

Side Two Sucks

Side two of this pressing is smeary, boxy and opaque, a sound we come across quite often when playing the scores of Golden Age classical recordings we audition every month here at Better Records.

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Mozart / Complete Wind Music Volume 2 – Reviewed in 2004

This record plays NM and sounds superb! A great London title. 

This record includes Serenade in E Flat, Divertimento in E Flat and Divertimento in F and K.

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.

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Mozart / Symphonies No. 39 & 36 / Bohm

This is not your typical DG, and as far as we’re concerned that’s a good thing! If you end up with this copy you may find yourself agreeing with us that it actually sounds pretty much like a good RCA pressing from the era, with the kind of rich, sweet sound that the best RCAs are famous for, and rightly so.  

The sound on side one is spacious and sweet, with good texture to the strings, far from the smeared, hard, steely sound that so many DG pressings suffer from.

And side two is even better! More transparent, with better texture and even richer sound.

Side one earned a grade of A+. In the loudest string passages it can get to be a bit much, so we took a plus off for that shortcoming and the fact that side two gives you a bit more of everything that’s good with the sound.

This is an Italian pressing, and what a lovely record it is! Bohm is of course quite famous as an interpreter of Mozart. This performance from the early ’60s should be considered one of the best on record.

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