_Performers – Richter, Sviatoslav

Tchaikovsky / Piano Concerto No. 1 – Our First Shootout Winner – 2008

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Tchaikovsky Available Now

This fairly quiet Large Tulips early DG pressing in the heavy cardboard outer sleeve has THE BEST SOUND we have ever heard for this recording! Believe me, they don’t all sound like this! This copy is airy and sweet; just listen to the flutes — you can really hear the air moving through them. There is still some congestion in the loudest passages, but that’s unfortunately not something we can do anything about. Since it’s on every copy we’ve ever played we just have to assume it’s part of the recording.

Of the twenty or so clean copies we’ve auditioned over the last year or two, this one is clearly in a league of its own, with a price to match.

THE Tchaikovsky First

Since this is the best performance of the Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto of all time, the minor shortcomings in the sound are easy to overlook. The piano sounds solid and full bodied. I don’t know of another performance of this work that gets the sound of the piano better. You can really hear the percussive quality of the instrument. It’s amazing how many piano recordings have poorly mic’ed pianos. They’re either too distant, lack proper reproduction of the lower registers, or somehow smear the pounding of the keys into a blurry mess. The piano sound is what first impressed me when a friend of mine brought the record over for me to hear. Of course I bought it on the spot.

And the texture of the strings is out of this world — you won’t find a DG that gets with better string tone, and 99% of them are worse. This record does not sound like your typical DG: hard, shrill, and sour. DG made good records in the ’50s and ’60s and then proceeded to fall apart, like most labels did. This is one of their finest recordings. It proves that at one time they knew what they were doing.

This recording really only has one shortcoming, which is that in some sections, when it gets loud, it tends to be a bit congested. Other places are very dynamic. I’m guessing somebody dialed in too much compression in those spots, but who’s to say?

[Not sure we would agree with that in 2024. The best copies are not congested when cleaned and played back properly.]

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Liszt / Piano Concertos – An Early Outlier

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

More Top Quality Classical Piano Recordings

This Beyond White Hot Stamper 2-pack has sound that must be experienced to be believed! The finest Liszt 1st & 2nd Concertos we know of for performance and unquestionably for sound when they sound like this. More like LIVE MUSIC than any classical recording I have played in longer than I care to remember – both sides are so big, rich and transparent we guarantee you have never heard a better piano concerto.

  • Our lengthy commentary entitled Outliers & Out-of-This-World Sound talks about how rare these kinds of pressings are and how to go about finding them.
  • We no longer give Four Pluses out as a matter of policy, but that doesn’t mean we don’t come across records that deserve them from time to time.

Richter and Kondrashin deliver the finest Liszt 1st & 2nd Piano Concertos I know of, musically, sonically and in every other way. Richter’s performance here is alternately energetic and lyrical, precisely as the work demands. The recording itself is explosively dynamic. The brass is unbelievably full, rich and powerful. You won’t find a better recording of this music anywhere, and on side two this pressing just cannot be beat. It’s BEYOND White Hot (A++++). There was simply no other copy on any side that was close to it. 

Both Sides Now

Big and rich (always a problem with piano recordings: you want to hear the percussive qualities of the instrument, but few copies can pull it off without sounding thin). We love the BIG, FAT, Tubey Magical sound of this recording! The piano is HUGE and powerful — like a real piano.

Huge hall, weight and energy, this is DEMO DISC QUALITY SOUND by any standard.

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Letter of the Week – “I’m surprised you parted with this one”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Tchaikovsky Available Now

Phil is a long time customer who shares my love for Richter and Karajan’s powerful and exceptionally well-recorded performance of Tchaikovsky’s 1st Piano Concerto.

He knows full well how bad most copies sound — he has a few of his own to prove it. When he saw this beauty in the mailer he did what any self-respecting record lover would do: he jumped on it. Even at $500 he feels he got his money’s worth, and that’s a lot of money for a Deutsche Grammophon record, the kind that no record store in the world would charge more than ten or twenty dollars for. If only we could find more like it…

Phil writes: 

You called it exactly right. The opening salvo by the orchestra gave me chills, and I knew I was hearing something extraordinary. In spite of tutti mayhem, the sound and performance is operatic and thrilling. I’m surprised you parted with this one.

Phil, years ago I used to say on the site that the best copies go in my collection, but that hasn’t been true for quite some time now. I have about ten records in my collection that I’m keeping for one reason or another, and everything else goes into the shootouts we do around here. (I may list my own collection on the site one of these days. You could type up the whole list in twenty minutes.)

Good records should be played, and when do I have time to play records for myself? We spin the damn things all day long. Monday through Friday, the VPI is booked. On the weekends I like a little peace and quiet; can you blame me? So better that you have an amazing record like that to play. I’ll just be content with the memory of the sound — until we do the next shootout of course. Then we’ll play it all day long and I’ll have a chance to really get back into again.

The performance on that record is really one for the ages. I hope we find a Hot Stamper that sounds as good as the one you bought. I don’t expect to, but it sure would be nice for someone else to have the chance to hear that recording at its best.

Britten / Piano & Violin Concertos / Richter – Side to Side Differences

Hot Stamper Decca and London Pressings Available Now

This London pressing has Super Hot Stamper sound on side two, the Violin Concerto side. Here the violin sounds superb — rich, sweet and natural.

The brass on this side is HUGE, which is a bit shocking for a later London from 1971. Once you get past the 60s, the sound of most Londons is opaque and flat (which describes perfectly far too many Londons with Solti at the helm), but not so here.

The stage is as deep and wide as any vintage Golden Age recording we’ve played recently, and we’ve played plenty. (more…)