_Composers – Prokofiev

Prokofiev / Romeo and Juliet – Our Killer Copy from 2009

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

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Sergei Prokofiev

Superb Sound on this Victrola pressing, with TRANSPARENCY, spaciousness and low level detail you will not believe.

And plenty of Living Stereo COLOR.  

DEMO QUALITY SOUND, if what you’re demonstrating is the three dimensional quality of Living Stereo recordings. Amazing space, depth and width can be heard on this side one. And the music is sublime.

The low level detail in the opening and the amount of ambience heard in the quieter sections is shockingly realistic Yes, the recording is compressed, which led me to think that the entire record was compressed, but that’s not completely true. In some parts it’s quite dynamic. The quiet portions are very quiet; in a couple of places there are just horns playing off in the deep distance, followed by some flutes, and they sound very natural, just as you would hear them in a concert hall. (more…)

Prokofiev / Concerto No. 2 / Frager – A Top Performance

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

This is a very nice looking RCA Living Stereo Shaded Dog LP. Some parts sound better than others but the real reason to buy this record is the performance. Frager is amazing here; he won awards for his performance of this piece in international competitions. The record also features Haydn – Sonata No. 35. The record is a member of HP’s TAS list.  

Prokofiev – Peter and the Wolf / Lieutenant Kije

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

  • Superb Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER on both sides of this reissue pressing – this copy was doing pretty much everything we wanted it to
  • We would have loved to have a clean Vanguard Black Label pressing to offer you, but we haven’t seen a clean one in at least five years, maybe more
  • Our favorite performance of Peter and the Wolf, with wonderful narration by no less than the incomparable film legend, Boris Karloff himself
  • The Lt. Kije on side two is also excellent, close to our favorite, the Abbado on DG from 1978, which was recorded more than twenty years later
  • Tubey Magically rich, yet realistic, which is of course an impossibility, but the Vanguard engineers manage to pull it off

This performance of Peter and the Wolf from 1957 is our single favorite recording of the work. This copy is a DEMO DISC, suitable for permanently destroying the rationale for every audiophile record ever made, simply on the grounds that none of them sound remotely as good as this one does.

The immediacy and unerringly realistic presentation of the solo instruments — bassoon, oboe, flute, etc. (each of which serves to represent a character in the story) — are so lifelike that I defy anyone to name a recording to challenge our assertion that this is positively As Good As It Gets.

And did I mention that it was made in 1957? You couldn’t even buy it on stereo disc back then!

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A True Audiophile Pressing at 45 RPM to Shame Them All

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

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Sergei Prokofiev

This Japanese 45 RPM remastering of our favorite recording of Prokofiev’s wonderful Lt. Kije Suite has DEMONSTRATION QUALITY SOUND. For starters, there are very few records with dynamics comparable to these. Since this is my favorite performance of all time, I can’t recommend the record any more highly. 

Most of what’s “bad” about a DG recording from 1978 is ameliorated with this pressing. The bass drum (drums?) here must be heard to be believed. We know of no Golden Age recording with as believable a presentation of the instrument as this.

The drum is clearly and precisely located at the back of the stage; even better, it’s as huge and powerful and room-filling as it would have been had you attended the session yourself. That’s our idea of hi-fidelity here at Better Records.

Real Dynamics

Over the course of this and many other shootouts, we’ve discovered that it’s practically impossible to find the right volume setting for this album. It’s so dynamic that no matter what volume you set it at the loud portions get too loud. There is a huge amount of deep bass on this recording and that, coupled with the practically unparalleled dynamics, means that you must have a great deal of amplifier power to reproduce this one properly. Either that or a very efficient speaker such as a horn. I confess I would need a great deal more power than I have at my disposal to get the climaxes of this recording to play cleanly.

The Best DG Recording

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