_Composers – Mendelssohn

Mendelssohn / Violin Concerto / Rybar

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Felix Mendelssohn Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This review is from ten or fifteen years ago. If you see the album for cheap in the bins, pick it up and tell us what you think of it. Our favorite recordings of the work by Ricci, Heifetz and Campoli can be found here.

This Whitehall budget reissue stereo pressing has SUPERB Hot Stamper sound on both sides and a performance by Peter Rybar that can hold its own against any you may have heard.   

This recording easily beats most of the vintage Shaded Dogs, Mercurys and London records that we’ve ever played here at Better Records, and it was released on vinyl by a relatively obscure budget label that most audiophiles have never even heard of and would probably not want to be caught dead with.

Which is a good reason to judge records by playing them, not reading about them, on the net or in magazines. The sound of this record is so wonderful that, had it been a rare Shaded Dog, Merc or London it would have sold for something approaching twice the money we are asking here. In my experience relatively few of those recordings are as good as this one.

Whitehall

The best Whitehall records can be superb, but finding them on quiet vinyl is next to impossible. This copy plays Mint Minus Minus which is about as quiet as any we have heard.

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The Best Sound Here Is Everything But the 1812

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Recordings Available Now

UPDATE 2026

We no longer do shootouts for this title.

A number of other records have top quality sound for these famous pieces, so we see no reason to continue to struggle to find clean copies of LSC 2241 the way we might have done ten or twenty years ago.

If you see this title at a good price, feel free to pick it up as long as you can return it. Many of these old Shaded Dogs are noisy or groove-damaged, especially those that have dynamic, exciting music like this one.

Our old review follows:

The real stars here are NOT the 1812, but the three coupling works, which demonstrate, on this copy at least, The Real Power of the Orchestra. The remarkably rich, Tubey Magical and oh-so-rosiny Living Stereo strings and powerful, dynamic brass make this a real demo quality orchestral heavyweight.

Lizst’s Mephisto Waltz, Mendelssohn’s The Hebrides Overture, and the Tragic Overture by Brahms are the Must Own 36 minutes worth of music on the record.

A rare and wonderful early Living Stereo Shaded Dog pressing containing an outstanding performance from Reiner and the CSO on everything but the 1812.

Say what?

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Don’t Let the Cover Fool You

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Mendelssohn Available Now

UPDATE 2026

After years of putting it off, we eventually got around to doing a shootout for the album, the results of which you can find here.

Many years ago we had played the record, liked it, and then completely forgotten about it.

Demo disc quality. This record has the same kind of amazing sound as the Chabrier disc on London, but it’s much more rare, perhaps because the cover did not do much to sell the album.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard a better Mendelssohn 4th. 

We admit we foolishly did not expect much from a mid-60s London with a cover this plain.

It’s hard to get excited about an album with such a generic cover, but hearing the recording we were forced to confront our silly prejudices and recognize the greatness of James Lock‘s work for Decca in 1965.

It even beats the famous Solti on Blueback, which has a cover to die for (shown below). However, like many of the Londons and Deccas we’ve played over the years, the sound of that pressing is awful.

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Janos Starker Plays Works By Debussy, Bartok And Others

More Mercury Classical Recordings

  • Starker and Sebok’s virtuoso performances debut on the site with the rich, dynamic, and tubey sound we were hoping for, earning STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them throughout this early Plum Label Mercury pressing of SR-90405
  • Both of these sides are big, full-bodied, clean and clear, with a wonderfully present and solid piano, and plenty of 3D space around it
  • The cello is present and immediate, with sound that is remarkably textured, full and harmonically natural
  • Not only is this the best sounding copy we have to offer from our recent shootout, but we are happy to report that the vinyl is reasonably quiet for a vintage Plum Label Mercury stereo pressing

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Mendelssohn – Symphonies No. 4 (“Italian”) and 5 (“Reformation”) / Munch

More Classical and Orchestral Recordings

  • Munch and the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s dynamic and lively performance, here with a KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side two of this vintage Living Stereo reissue pressing
  • It took us about a decade to finally realize that the Shaded Dog pressings, no matter what stampers they had, would simply never sound the way we wanted them to, and that the only way forward was to track down the right reissues, which I am happy to report we have now succeeded in doing
  • These sides are doing practically everything right – they’re rich, clear, undistorted, open, spacious, and have depth and transparency to rival the best recordings you may have heard
  • An abundance of energy, loads of rich detail and texture, and excellent clarity – the very definition of Demo Disc sound
  • There are some bad marks (as is sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs) on the third movement of Symphony No. 4 (“Italian”), but once you hear just how incredible sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and just be swept away by the music

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Mendelssohn / Chopin – Cello Sonatas / Starker / Sebok

Mercury Living Presence Records Available Now

  • Starker and Sebok’s virtuoso performances debut on the site with the rich, dynamic, and tubey sound we were hoping for, earning INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades throughout this original Plum Label Mercury pressing
  • Both of these sides are big, full-bodied, clean and clear, with a wonderfully present and solid piano, and plenty of 3D space around it
  • The cello is present and immediate, with sound that is remarkably textured, full and harmonically natural
  • Not only is this the best sounding copy we have to offer from our recent shootout, but we are happy to report that the vinyl is reasonably quiet for a vintage Plum Label Mercury stereo pressing, with no marks that play or problems with the inner grooves

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This Blueback Was Somewhat Opaque and Crude – Does that Surprise You?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Felix Mendelssohn Available Now

Presenting our latest findings from 2023:

For our most recent shootout, the original we played earned grades of 1.5+ on both sides, a grade that is the absolute minimum for a Hot Stamper pressing to be listed on the site now.

Our best reissues killed it.

The 3D/3E stampers of our early Blueback copy can probably be beaten by others — assuming there are others — but this is just not a good bet for us when it comes to Mendelssohn’s famous Third Symphony, not when there are so many other pressings with superior sound.

Our favorite performance with top quality sound is made from the same recording you see here, but on a certain budget reissue that has much better sound.

It’s very possible that the Speakers Corner Heavy Vinyl pressing from 2003 pictured below would beat the original we describe. We make no claims that it doesn’t, or wouldn’t.

Our claim would be that a properly-mastered, properly-pressed version of the album is very unlikely to be bested by something from Speakers Corner, or any other label making records during the last thirty years.

What I would have played against the Speakers Corner pressing in 2003 would have been an original London Blueback, and maybe a Stereo Treasury or two. Both of them would have been obvious choices, and I was stuck making obvious choices because I simply did not understand enough about classical records at the time to do otherwise.

I confess I knew very little about the recording of the 3rd symphony back in those days, and I certainly didn’t know how good some of the right reissues could sound.

Obviously we needed to do a great deal more research and development, which we began to undertake over the course of the next twenty years in a much more serious way, making one discovery after another.

And that all happened out of the love for great sounding music on vinyl, and, every bit as importantly, because we get paid to do it.

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Violin Concertos Are Ideal for Testing Table Setup

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin Available Now

This is one of the ALL TIME GREAT violin concerto records. In Ruggiero Ricci’s hands both works are nothing short of magical. If you want to know why people drool over Golden Age recordings, listen to the violin. Careful, when you hear it you may find yourself drooling too.

The staging of the orchestra and violin is exactly the way we want to hear it in our heads. Whether it would really sound this way in a concert hall is impossible to say — concert halls all sound different — but the skill and the emotion of the playing is communicated beautifully on this LP. This is a sweetheart of a record, full of the Tubey Magic for which London recordings are justly famous.

As we noted above, engineering took place in the legendary Kingsway Hall. There is a richness to the sound of the strings that is exceptional, yet clarity and transparency are not sacrificed in the least.

VTA and the Violin

This is truly The Perfect Turntable setup disc. When your VTA, azimuth, tracking weight and anti-skate are correct, this is the record that will make it clear to you that your efforts have paid off.

What to listen for you ask? With the proper adjustment the harmonics of the strings will sound extended and correct, neither hyped up nor dull; the wood body of the instrument will be more audibly “woody”; the fingering at the neck will be noticeable but will not call attention to itself in an unnatural way. In other words, as you adjust your setup, the violin will sound more and more right.

And you can’t really know how right it can sound until you go through hours of experimentation with all the forces that affect the way the needle rides the groove. Without precise VTA adjustment there is almost no way this record will do everything it’s capable of doing. There will be hardness, smear, sourness, thinness — something will be off somewhere. With total control over your arm and cartridge setup, these problems will all but vanish. (Depending on the quality of the equipment of course.)

We harp on all aspects of reproduction for a reason. When you have done the work, records like this are nothing less than GLORIOUS.

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Tchaikovsky / Mendelssohn, et al. / 1812 Overture / Fingal’s Cave Overture & more / Reiner

More of the Music of Tchaikovsky

  • A rare and wonderful early Shaded Dog pressing that boasts excellent Double Plus (A++) sound from start to finish
  • Remarkably rich, Tubey Magical and oh-so-rosiny Living Stereo strings and powerful, dynamic brass make this a real Demo Disc quality orchestral heavyweight
  • The real stars here are NOT the 1812, but the three coupling works, which demonstrate, on this copy at least, The Real Power of the Orchestra

Lizst’s Mephisto Waltz, Mendelssohn’s The Hebrides Overture, and the Tragic Overture by Brahms are the Must Own 36 minutes worth of music on this record.

It’s an outstanding performance from Reiner and the CSO on everything but the 1812.

Say what?

Yes, it’s true. After hearing the amazing Decca pressing with Alwyn conducting, we knew early on that Reiner and the CSO were simply not competitive in terms of performance, and the RCA engineers also failed to capture the deep bass of the organ on their pressing.

What we were impressed with were the three other works, all played with verve and technical skill and as enjoyable as any music you can find on this site. Go to YouTube to listen to them if you are not familiar with the works. All of them belong in any serious music collection, and these recordings (and our Hot Stamper pressings) do them proud.

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Mendelssohn – Symphony No. 4 / Ansermet

More of the Music of Mendelssohn

  • This original London pressing of Ansermet and the Suisse Romande’s masterful performance of Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 boasts STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from first note to last
  • 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
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this incredible copy in our notes: “sweet and breathy woodwinds”…”transparent”…”strings get huge and weighty”…”tubey brass”…”great size and energy”…”lots of detail and space”…”most lush and weighty strings” (side two)
  • A spectacular Demo Disc quality orchestral recording – big, clear, rich, dynamic, transparent and energetic
  • There is richness and texture to the strings that no record made in the last 30 years can capture, and if you don’t believe me, we offer this pressing as proof
  • 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.

This record has the same kind of amazing sound as the Chabrier disc on London from the same year, but it’s much more rare, perhaps because the cover does not help to sell the album. (The Chabrier cover is not much either, but in both cases the music and sound are sublime.)

I don’t think I’ve ever heard a better Mendelssohn 4th.

We admit we foolishly did not expect much from a mid-60s London with a cover this plain.

It’s hard to get excited about an album with such a generic cover, but hearing the recording we were forced to confront our silly prejudices and recognize the greatness of James Lock‘s work for Decca in 1965.

It even beats the famous Solti on Blueback, which has a cover to die for. However, like many of the Londons and Deccas we’ve played over the years, the sound of that pressing is awful.

(more…)