Composers

A Lively Hall Creates the Right Sound for Dances of Old Vienna

Hot Stamper Pressings on Two of Our Favorite Labels, Decca & London

Wow, what a find! Dances of Old Vienna is a WONDERFUL sounding record with vintage Decca / London sound. Even as late as 1968 Decca was still able to produce recordings that are tonally correct from top to bottom and full of Tubey Magic.

There is not a trace of hyped-up sound to be found on this record. It’s unbelievably spacious and three-dimensional, with depth to rival any recording you may own.

The sound is especially spacious partly because the recording is of a fairly small ensemble, playing in a lively hall, exactly the kind of venue in which this music was meant to be heard.

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LSC 2429 – Grieg & Liszt with Rubinstein – You Can Do Better

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Grieg Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This is a very old review of LSC 2429, which we ourselves may no longer agree with.

If you see this record in the bins for cheap, give it a try, but don’t pay a lot on our say-so.

Our two favorite recordings of the Grieg Piano Concerto are the Decca with Lupu and Previn from 1973 and Rubinstein’s for RCA in 1962. Either one should be superior to the Living Stereo Shaded Dog we review here.

The strings are RICH in the best Living Stereo tradition, but unlike so many classical pressings we play, the tubey magical string tone comes with virtually no tube smear. The textures and overtones are fully intact.

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Every Last One of These Bartok Records with Ansermet Was No Good

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bela Bartok Available Now

Every last one of our London pressings of Concerto for Orchestra was a disaster: smeary strings, blary brass and painfully shrill throughout, with no top or bottom to speak of, the very definition of boxy sound.

The entire group of CS 6086 we had on hand — whether on Blueback or Whiteback, we had a good selection of both — were much too unpleasant to be played on high quality modern equipment.

Why had I been buying them for years?

I made the mistake of assuming that the phenomenally talented Decca engineering and producing team who worked on this project could be relied upon to produce a top quality recording of the Concerto for Orchestra.

As it turns out, my guess turned out to be wrong.

I had made the mistake of believing in the infallability of experts.

I talk about the team of producers and engineers seen below in listing after listing, raving about the amazing sound of the recordings produced by them in the 50s and 60s, many of which are right at the top of the best sounding recordings I have ever had the privilege to play.

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Brahms / Piano Concerto No. 1 on Speakers Corner Heavy Vinyl

Hot Stamper Classical and Orchestral Imports on Decca & London

UPDATE 2026

This review was written in the 90s, back in the days when we were selling Heavy Vinyl records. We had auditioned it and found it to be one of the better releases from Speakers Corner.

Based upon that very unreliable assessment from many, many decades ago, it might still be one of the better Heavy Vinyl pressings from the label. If you can pick one up for cheap, give it a try and see if we were right that it’s “good.”

Of course, the right London pressing would be a huge step up in sound quality for those who have the means to acquire one.

Our Old Review

One of the best of the Speakers Corner heavy vinyl reissues. As you may know they have gone way downhill lately. Haven’t played this LP in a while but I remember liking it quite a bit back in the day.

As a general rule, this Heavy Vinyl pressing will fall short in some of the following areas when played head to head against the vintage pressings we offer:

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Petrushka on Speakers Corner

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Stravinsky Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This review was written in the 90s when we were still selling Heavy Vinyl records like this Decca reissue from Speakers Corner, which was one of the better releases.

Our current favorite recording of Petrushka for both performance and sound is the one Dorati recorded for Mercury in 1960.

Sonic Grade: B (I’m guessing)

We haven’t played a copy of this record in years, but back in the day we liked it, so let’s call it a “B” with the caveat that the older the review, the more likely we are to have changed our minds.

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Bartok / Concerto for Orchestra / Solti

More of the Music of Bela Bartok

  • Huge hall, massive weight and powerful energy, this is Demo Disc quality sound by any standard
  • The sound here is glorious, full of all of the qualities that make listening to classical music in analog so involving
  • There are many great recordings of the work, and we had plenty to choose from, but for sonics and performance combined, Solti’s Decca recording from the mid-60s could not be beat
  • “Solti’s Concerto for Orchestra with the LSO was one of the finest of its day and remains so. Highly recommended.”
  • If you’re a fan of Bartok’s orchestral masterpiece, this London from 1965 belongs in your collection.
  • Watch out for Solti’s later recordings for Decca – they usually have an obvious shortcoming which we cannot abide in the classical records we play

Solti breathes life into these works as only he can and the Decca engineering team led by Kenneth Wilkinson do him proud.

“Solti was regarded as, above all, a superb Wagnerian. His performances and countless recordings of other nineteenth century German and Austrian music were also well-regarded, as were his Verdi and his frequent forays into such twentieth century repertory as Bartók, Shostakovich, and Stravinsky.”

There are about 150 orchestral recordings we’ve awarded the honor of offering the best performances with the highest quality sound, and this record certainly deserve a place on that list.

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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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Winds In Hi-Fi / Fennell – Another Top Mercury, formerly on the TAS List

Hot Stamper Mercury Pressings Available Now

  • An early Plum Label copy of this famous TAS list LP with STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them throughout
  • It’s also fairly quiet at Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • This pressing boasts incredible sound from start to finish – Mercury knows how to capture the bite of the brass
  • Fennell is a master of this sort of sweet and lyrical Wind Music
  • Both sides of this spectacular Demo Disc recording are big, clear, rich, dynamic, transparent and energetic – here is the Mercury sound we love, and that is so hard to find
  • Marks and problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these early pressings – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you

Harry Pearson put this record on his TAS list of Super Discs many years ago, but, like so many amazingly good recordings from the golden age, it no longer appears to qualify for inclusion.

Regardless of its current status with the writers at The Absolute Sound, a group whose taste and acumen must be considered questionable at best, the credit must go to Fennel along with the brilliant engineering team at Mercury. I’ve been told that he was a stickler for making sure everyone was perfectly in tune and playing correctly within the ensemble. That’s exactly what you hear when you play a record like this — it’s practically sonic perfection.

Fennell made a number of band music recordings for Mercury. My favorite is British Band Classics Vol. 2, which was the first Mercury recording I ever heard. I went out and bought a copy of it immediately from my local Tower Records on Golden Import.

Years later when I heard the real thing, and original pressing, I realized the Golden Import was a pretty second rate reissue, fine for the $3.99 I might have paid but a big step down from the early pressings.

Also, if you ever see a clean copy of Vol. 1, only available in Mono, pick it up. If it’s cut right it, too, is out of this world.

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The “Not-So-Golden-Age” of RCA, Mercury, London and Others

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Titles Available Now

We ran into a number of copies of this title that had what we like to call “old record sound,” which is surprisingly common on even the most revered Golden Age labels, RCA included.

No top, no real bottom, congested climaxes and a general shrillness to the sound — we’ve played Living Stereos by the dozens that have these shortcomings and many more.

Some audiophiles may be impressed by the average Shaded Dog pressing, but I can assure you that we here at Better Records are decidedly not of that persuasion.

Something in the range of five to ten per cent of the major label Golden Age recordings we play will eventually make it to the site. The vast majority just don’t sound all that good to us. (Many have second- and third-rate performances and those get tossed without ever making it to a shootout.)

The One Out of Ten Rule

If you have too many classical records taking up too much space and need to winnow them down to a more manageable size, pick a composer and play half a dozen of his works.

Most classical records display an irredeemable mediocrity right from the start. It does not take a pair of golden ears to hear it.

If you’re after the best sound, it’s the rare record that will have it, which makes clearing shelf space a lot easier than you might imagine. If you keep more than one out of ten, you’re probably setting the bar too low, if our experience is any guide.

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This Is What We Refer to as “Blockbuster Sound”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bernard Herrmann Available Now

The Mysterious Film World of Bernard Herrmann is an outstanding recording, with a huge three-dimensional stage. It’s open and clear, with an extended top and plenty going on down low. The sound on the best pressings is nothing short of amazing.

This is Demo Disc quality sound by any measure, especially on big speakers at loud levels.

Side one boasts some wonderful material from Mysterious Island and Jason and the Argonauts. Who else but Herrmann could have orchestrated such phantasmagorical goings on?

The Three Worlds Of Gulliver Suite takes up all of side two. The complete score from which the suite is taken can be found on the original Herrmann album The Three Worlds of Gulliver, a long-time and extremely rare member of the TAS Super Disc List.

Borrowing from the Best

One reason this music is so wonderful is because it’s been more or less lifted from, and orchestrated exactly like, Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tale of Tsar Saltan.

Herrmann was no doubt familiar with Rimsky-Korsakov’s work, and knew that his “sound” was exactly the one that would work for the film. He overlayed his own compositional style onto Rimsky-Korsakov’s, and the result is a soundtrack of breathtaking beauty, full of exotic instrumental colors and delicious audiophile-candy percussion.

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