More Classical and Orchestral Pressings

• Amazing sound throughout this Columbia Masterworks pressing, with both sides earning superb Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or very close to them
• 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
• These sides are wonderfully rich, full-bodied and Tubey Magical, with a present guitar and tons of space around all of the instruments in this lovely chamber orchestra recording
• A friend played me this record more than twenty years ago and I was knocked out by the beauty of the sound at the time, especially considering it was recorded in 1979, long after great classical recordings had become so rare as to be practically nonexistent
• With top quality cleaning and the ability to find even better sounding pressings in our shootouts, you can be sure the copies we offer are a big step up from what I heard all those years ago
• There’s a very good chance that you have never heard a better guitar concerto record, let alone owned one of such quality

If I could have only one guitar concerto recording in my collection, there’s a very good chance I would choose this one — that’s of course assuming I could have a copy that sounds as good as this one does on side one. It’s spacious and open and three-dimensional in a way that few classical recordings we play are, and we play an awful lot of top quality classical records. 

Although it may not be from the Golden Age or on London, it sounds to these ears every bit as good as any guitar concerto record I can remember hearing from that era or that label.

And the music is sublime. I heard this piece at a customer’s home in a very large room with a high ceiling, the speakers pulled well out from the walls. The speakers disappeared, leaving sound that was nothing less than glorious, as big as the room and as natural as any I had heard up until that time. That was about twenty years ago. 

(more…)