_Conductors – Solti

Select Commentaries and Letters for The Planets

Hot Stamper Pressings of Orchestral Spectaculars Available Now

Below you will find a number of the more popular commentaries we’ve written about the various recordings of this wonderful piece of music.

Included here is also a letter from a customer who spent some time with a Hot Stamper pressing of our favorite recording of The Planets.

We’ve been actively auditioning recordings of Holst’s Masterpiece since the 70s. We finally landed on the one we think offers the audiophile connoisseur the best combination of sound and performance, Andre Previn’s with The London Symphony in 1974.

(There are about 150 other orchestral recordings we think offer the best performances with the highest quality sound.  Check them out when you have time.)

This Recording of The Planets Has “Blockbuster Sound,” For Better and For Worse

The Planets – MoFi and UHQR Reviewed


(more…)

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.

(more…)

Venice on Classic Records

Hot Stamper Pressings of Classical and Orchestral Music

Classic Records remastered the tapes for LSC 2313 and even the people who like the sound of Classic’s Heavy Vinyl pressings used to complain about it, so you can imagine what we think of it.

What a piece of garbage. With smeary, shrill, screechy strings, it gives no indication of the beauty that is on the tape. 

The Victrola reissue, VICS 1119, is dramatically better sounding than any other reissue of the album we have played, including of course the Classic, and may even be better sounding that the Shaded Dog original itself.

This Heavy Vinyl reissue is noticeably lacking in a number of areas that are important to the proper presentation of orchestral music. If you own a copy of this title, listen for the qualities we identified above in the sound that came up short.

Below you will find links to other records that have the same shortcomings we heard when playing the Classic Records pressing of LSC 2313.

(more…)

Rossini-Respighi / La Boutique Fantasque / Solti

More of the Music of Respighi

  • An early London pressing of Solti and the Israel Phil’s performance of this wonderful ballet suite, here with seriously good Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them from first note to last
  • It’s also remarkably quiet at Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • An abundance of energy, loads of rich detail and texture, superb transparency and excellent clarity (particularly on side one) – the very definition of Demo Disc sound
  • After trying a few years ago, we knew the best copies had the potential to be knockouts in the Decca canon – after that it was only a matter of finding enough clean copies
  • No other performance or recording we played could hold a candle to this one – the Fiedler we used to like years ago was especially disappointing this time around
  • The best sides were always the biggest, clearest and most three-dimensional, assuming they were able to retain the rich, natural, balanced tonality that is inherently key to a good record, or a great one in this case
  • 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.

(more…)

Who on Earth Could Possibly Take the Sound of this Ridiculous Remaster Seriously?

Hot Stamper Pressings on Decca and London Available Now

There actually is such a person who does exactly that, can you imagine?

Only an Audiophile True Believer could be fooled by sound so ridiculously unnatural.

But the world is full of such people. They bought into the audiophile BS of Mobile Fidelity in the 80s and apparently haven’t learned much since.

Now they think Heavy Vinyl is the answer to the world’s problems. The more things change…

If your stereo is any good at all, you should have no trouble hearing the sonic qualities of this album we describe below. If you are on this blog, and you have tried some of our Hot Stamper pressings, there is a good chance you’re hearing pretty much what we’re hearing. Why else why would you pay our prices?

One thing I can tell you: we would never charge money for a record that sounds as weird and wrong as this MoFi.

A well-known reviewer has many kind things to say about this pressing, but we think it sounds like a hi-fi-ish version of a 70s London, which means it’s opaque and the strings are badly lacking in Tubey Magical sheen and richness.

The bass is like jello on the MoFi, unlike the real London, which has fairly decent bass.

If an audiophile reviewer cannot hear the obvious faults of this pressing, I would say there’s a good chance one or both of the following is true:

  1. His equipment is not telling him what the record is really doing, and/or,
  2. His listening skills are not sufficiently developed to notice the shortcomings in the sound.

The result is the worst kind of reviewer malpractice.

But is it really the worst kind? It seems to be the only kind!

MoFi had a bad habit of making bright classical records. I suppose you could say they had a bad habit of making bright records in general. A few are dull, some are just right, but most of them are bright in one way or another.

Dull playback equipment? An attempt to confuse detail with resolution? Whatever the reasons, the better and more accurate your equipment becomes, the more obvious this shortcoming will be. My tolerance for their phony EQ is at an all time low. But hey, that’s me.

(more…)

Beethoven – Symphony No. 3 (“Eroica”) / Solti

More of the Music of Ludwig van Beethoven

  • Both sides of this vintage copy were giving us the rich and Tubey Magical Decca / London sound we were looking for, earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • It’s simply bigger, more transparent, less distorted, more three-dimensional and more real than most of what we played
  • A top performance from Solti and the Vienna Phil – it’s classic Solti: fast-paced, exciting and powerful
  • Solti’s Beethoven recordings from 1959 are superb, with the 5th and 7th being every bit as good – it’s his later recordings, the ones from the early 1970s, that we find fault with
  • 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.
  • And if you have an original Decca or London of this title, be prepared to be knocked out by how much better this later pressing sounds — knocked out like we were, truth be told

(more…)

Mahler – Symphony No. 1 / Solti

More Classical and Orchestral Recordings

  • Boasting two huge, powerful and tubey Double Plus (A++) sides or BETTER, we guarantee you’ve never heard Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 sound remotely as good as it does on this vintage London pressing
  • The sonic are big and rich, lively and open, with an abundance of depth and huge climaxes that hold together
  • Everything that we listen for in a great classical recording can be heard on this copy – it’s immediate, dynamic, very low distortion, spacious, and alive
  • We had one original unboxed Decca, and what a disappointment it was after hearing so many great sounding London pressings
  • Mastered by Stan Goodall, it was not remotely competitive on either side with the work of Harry Fisher
  • 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.

(more…)

Beethoven Symphony No. 7 – This London with Solti Didn’t Make the Grade

Hot Stamper Classical and Orchestral Imports on Decca & London

In our survey for the work, we played a number of the better known recordings from the top conductors and orchestras around the world.

Here is what we heard when we dropped the needle on an early pressing of CS 6093, released in 1959.

Our notes read:

  • Awful,
  • so dry,
  • steely,
  • crude,
  • bad

In other words, it just sounded like an old record. The world is full of records that don’t sound very good. As a matter of fact they undoubtedly make up the bulk of large record collections.

And if you just happen to be the proud owner of a big record collection, how can you possibly find the time to play more than a small fraction of it in any given year. Or even over the course of a decade for that matter.

The fact is that you can’t. Which, on the upside, means that, as far as you know, all your records sound great!

No need to buy another copy of whatever title you care to name. What for? You haven’t played it in twenty years and probably won’t get around to pulling it off the shelf for a spin for at least another twenty.

Here’s hoping your kids like old records because they are going to end up with an awful lot of them.

Back to the Beethoven 7th. What a beautiful cover!

But what good is a beautiful cover when the record sounds as bad as this one does?

(more…)

Suppe – Overtures / Solti

More Imported Pressings on Decca and London

  • Solti and the Vienna Phil’s exquisite performance of Suppe’s Overtures debuts on the site with STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them throughout this original London Stereo pressing
  • Lovely string tone and texture, rich bass, a big hall, no smear, lovely transparency – the sonics here are hard to fault
  • This recording is overflowing with the kind of rich, spacious, Tubey Magical sound that can only be found on vintage vinyl

(more…)

This Beethoven Ninth Started Out with Two Strikes Against It

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Beethoven Available Now

MoFi took the shortcomings of a mediocre-at-best Decca recording from 1972 and made them even worse by means of their ridiculously misguided mastering decisions and wacky cutting system.

They should not have chosen this performance of the Ninth Symphony in the first place, and they certainly should not have added the treble they chose to add, which they did to this title and to every classical recording they remastered without regard to whether or not the recording needed brightening. None that I know of did. Try telling that to the brain trust running MoFi.

(They hired this guy to do their one-step digitally remastered pressings and from the get-go he’s been giving audiophiles the most ridiculously phony sounding records that collectors with way too much money can buy.)

The Decca recording of the Ninth from 1972 is opaque, lacks size and space, and comes off as a bit flat and dry.

Like practically every later Decca pressing we play, it’s passable at best.

Londons and Deccas from this era (1972 in this case) rarely sound very good to us.

Here is what we specifically don’t like about their sound.

If you want to know what’s wrong with the Mobile Fidelity pressing, take the above faults and add some others to them.

Start with an overall brighter EQ, add a 10k boost for extra sparkly strings, the kind that MoFi has always been smitten with, and finish with the tubby bass caused by the half-speed mastering process itself.

Voila! You are now in the presence of the kind of mid-fi trash that may have fooled some audiophiles way back when but now sounds as wrong as the records this ridiculous label is still making today.

Here are some other pressings with bright string tone that are best avoided by audiophiles looking for top quality sound.

1981 Was a Long Time Ago

Old school audio systems are notorious for being dark, dull and lacking in transparency. They might need bright records in order to sound good, but high quality modern systems do not.

If these two MoFi pressings sounds right to you, you are very likely living with one of those old school systems and it is long past time to get rid of it.

(more…)