Labels We Love – Mercury (Classical)

Rodrigo – Skip the Later Label Pressings of this TAS List Title

More of the music of Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-1999)

More TAS Super Disc Recordings

This is a TAS list title that deserves its place on a list of Super Discs, as long as you are talking about one that sounds the way the best copies do.

The best sides are exceptionally transparent and full of energy, with the lush strings of the guitars sounding much more textured and real. The orchestra is rich and sweet, especially for a Mercury, yet the guitars are clear, present and appropriately placed relative to the surrounding ensemble.

But all the later label pressings we’ve bought over the years, mostly because we could afford to buy them, hoping for a miracle, have fallen well short of the mark. The notes below tell the story of their typical and obvious shortcomings.

Side One of the most recent late label pressing we played was crude, smeary and hot (bright).

Side Two was even worse, it was very hot (bright).

If you want to avoid records with these problems, click on any of the links below to see the titles we’ve found over the years with the same issues.

Waking Up a Dull Stereo

If your system is dull, dull, deadly dull, the way older systems tend to be, this record has the hyped-up sound to bring it to life in no time.

There are scores of commentaries on the site about the huge improvements in audio available to the discerning (and well-healed) audiophile. It’s the reason Hot Stampers can and do sound dramatically better than their Heavy Vinyl or audiophile counterparts: because your stereo is good enough to show you the difference.

With an old school system you will continue to be fooled by bad records, just as I and all my audio buds were fooled thirty and forty years ago. Audio has improved immensely in that time. If you’re still playing Heavy Vinyl and audiophile pressings, as wall as vintage Golden Age classical records that don’t sound good, there’s a world of sound you’re missing. We discussed the issue in this commentary:

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Rodrigo / Concierto Andaluz & Concierto de Aranjuez

More of the music of Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-1999)

More TAS Super Disc Recordings

  • An original Mercury pressing of this wonderful TAS-approved recording (the first to hit the site in years) with incredible Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades from top to bottom – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • Our last shootout was in 2010 — we really dropped the ball on this one!
  • This is a TAS list title that deserves its place on a list of Super Discs, as long as you are talking about one that sounds the way this one does
  • The vinyl was a problem with many of our better copies — those of you who are fans of later Mercs, perhaps the Starker titles, just to take one example, know what I am talking about with the less-than-audiophile-quality surfaces so common to these pressings
  • These sides are exceptionally transparent and full of energy, with the lush strings of the guitars more textured and real than on practically all other copies we played
  • The orchestra sounds rich and sweet, yet the guitars are clear, present and appropriately placed relative to the surrounding ensemble

These Nearly White Hot Stamper pressings have top-quality sound that’s often surprisingly close to our White Hots, but they sell at substantial discounts to our Shootout Winners, making them a relative bargain in the world of Hot Stampers (“relative” meaning relative considering the prices we charge). We feel you get what you pay for here at Better Records, and if ever you don’t agree, please feel free to return the record for a full refund, no questions asked.

This is a wonderful record and fully deserving of its place on Harry’s TAS list. The performance here by the first family of guitar is legendary. More importantly, the music is delightful and belongs in any serious classical collection. (Others that belong that category can be found here.)

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Liszt / Smetana / Mussorgsky – Les Préludes / The Moldau / Night On Bald Mountain / Dorati

More of the music of Franz Liszt (1811-1886)

More Recordings on Mercury

  • Boasting superb Double Plus (A++) sound throughout, this original copy will show you just how good the Mercury engineers were back in those days
  • Dorati breathes life into these concert hall favorites as only he can, and the Mercury engineers (Fine and Eberenz) capture the excitement on tape as only they can
  • We have a preference for Dorati’s recordings with the London Symphony Orchestra, and a record like this will show you exactly why we do
  • The exciting sound of Mercury lives on through the vintage disc they made all those years ago – you can forget the idea that anybody will come along and produce sound of this quality
  • If you’re a fan of orchestral showpieces such as these, this LP from 1960 belongs in your collection

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Bach / Suites For Solo Cello No. 2 & No. 5 / Starker

More of the music of J.S. Bach (1685-1750)

Hot Stamper Mercury Pressings Available Now

  • An early Mercury label pressing of Starker’s legendary 1963 recording of Bach’s sublime music for solo cello with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them from top to bottom
  • Suite No. 5 takes up all of this superb Double Plus side two, and we guarantee you’ve never heard it sound this good
  • True, side one earned a minimal Hot Stamper grade of 1.5+, but we are very confidant that it will beat the pants off any Heavy Vinyl reissue, especially one by Speakers Corner, because every one of those that we played was opaque, muddy and thick enough to have us crying “uncle” after five minutes
  • Some Mercury pressings from the 50s have absolutely amazing sound
  • Speakers Corner mucked up the sound of this Mercury like you would not believe

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This Is Why We Love Records from the 50s

More Classical and Orchestral Recordings

Hot Stamper Pressings of Mercury Classical Recordings Available Now

From time to time a record comes our way that sounds absolutely amazing, “I can’t believe it’s a record” amazing.

If it’s the kind of record that sounds like the best copy of Fiesta in Hi-fi from our most recent shootout, we might even let our enthusiasm for its superb fidelity get the better of us. That’s the effect a record as good as the copy we played can have. You just can’t stop yourself from saying one great thing after another about it.

Our over-the-top notes, like those you see below, attempt to convey what it’s like to experience the absolutely breathtaking sound we were hearing.

But where is the harm in that? These are notes that no one outside of the staff are ever expected to see. They are helpful to us in writing our commentary and pricing the specific copy we auditioned, but they are practically never quoted in the listings.

Fiesta in Hi-Fi is an example of one of those recordings that doubles as a thrill ride. They come along from time to time in order to show us the kind of sound that we’d almost forgotten was possible on a record.

Oh yes, with the rare properly-cleaned, properly-mastered, properly-pressed vintage vinyl LP, played back on top quality equipment in a heavily treated, dedicated soundroom, we can assure you it is very possible indeed. Allow us to make the case with the Shootout Winning original pressing you see below.

The notes read: 

So rich and big / Great space and detail / Everything sweet + clear + breathy / 3D too / Great dynamics / A touch hot but so fun / Deep bass.

You know what’s unusual about these notes?

They’re the kind of notes we have never written for any Heavy Vinyl reissue, even for the one that won our shootout not long ago.

They are the kind of notes that make it clear to us what a sham the modern Heavy Vinyl pressing tends to be, even those that are done right.

No modern record we’ve ever played has ever had anything even approaching this kind of Big As Life sound, and we doubt one ever will. Living presence? This is a record that backs up Mercury’s claim and then some.

Records like this vintage vinyl pressing are thrilling in a way that very, very few records ever are.

Surprisingly, many of the most thrilling records we’ve ever played came from the same decade this record came from: the 50s.

Once you hear sound like this, you are not likely to forget it.

It sets a standard that modern remastered records simply cannot meet.

Further Reading

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The Original Mercury Pressings Don’t Sound Good on this Title, But Why?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Mercury Classical Recordings Available Now

Reviews and Commentaries for Mercury Classical Records

For Mercury classical and orchestral recordings, the original FR pressings (when there are such pressings) on the plum label are the way to go, right? 

In some cases, yes. We talk about how much better the FR pressings for The Firebird are compared to the much more common, and still quite good, M2 reissue pressings here.

And the FR pressing of the Rachmaninoff record you see pictured above may indeed have the best sound.

The stamper numbers you see below belong to a different album.

(We’ve lately been giving out much more stamper information than we used to, but for now we are keeping this title closer to the vest.)

Note that we had FR1, FR2 and FR3, all originals, yet none of them could be considered good enough to offer our customers.

It’s just another one of a number of rules of thumb collectors use (“A method or procedure derived entirely from practice or experience, without any basis in scientific knowledge; a roughly practical method.”), one that will sometimes lead you astray if what you are trying to find are not just good sounding pressings of albums, but the best sounding pressings of albums.

Same with reissue versus original. Nice rule of thumb, but it only works, to the extent that it works at all, if you have enough copies of the title to know that you’re not just assuming the original is better. You actually have the data — gathered from the other LPs you have played — to back it up.

Who knew the recording would sound so much better on the right reissue pressings?

Certainly not us, not until we had done the shootout.

The difference between the way we do things and the way others do them boils down to this: We assumed that the original could be the best, and then we tested that assumption and found out we were wrong to assume such a thing.

Since this is a famous TAS Super Disc title, we could have just said Harry Pearson must have had an off day when he put it on his list. Nothing new there. We think a fairly large number of records he liked had no business being called Super Discs.

But the right reissue of this Mercury — again, none of the ones you see pictured pictured — is indeed an exceptionally good sounding Super Disc.

This is why we do shootouts, and why you must do them too, if owning the highest quality pressings is important to you.

Fortunately for readers of this blog, our methods are explained in detail, free of charge.

We’ve also written quite a few commentaries to help audiophiles improve the way they think about records.

I implore everyone who wants to make progress in this hobby to learn from the mistakes we’ve made. There are 146 “we were wrong” listings on the site as of this writing, and we learned something from every damn one of them.

Further Reading

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Strauss Family Album – And to Think I Used to Like this Record

More of the music of Johann Strauss (1804-1849)

Hot Stamper Mercury Pressings Available Now

I used to like this record back in the old days. Picked them up whenever I saw them, usually for ten bucks or less. They’re fairly common. It’s not exactly HiFi a la Espanola.

Now when we play this Mercury, it doesn’t sound so good. We traded what we had in stock back in to stores or gave them away as freebies to our good customers.

A lot of records that I used to like because they were cleaner and brighter — later Red Seal Living Stereos, some OJC jazz, some reissues of rock — sounded much better when my system was darker and less revealing.

Side one of this copy has steely strings, the kiss of death on this kind of music.

Side two is passable, a low grade Hot Stamper. If you see this album for five bucks, pick it up and give it a listen. More than that and you should probably pass.

Many Mercury records simply do not sound good, and this appears to be one of them. The sound is  shrill, and that is just not acceptable on today’s highly-tweaked stereos.

Some of the early Mercs seem better suited to the old school audio systems of the 60s and 70s than the modern systems of today.

Some of these records used to sound good on those older systems, and I should know. I had an Old School stereo and some of the records I used to think sounded good back in the day don’t sound too good to me anymore.

For a more complete list of those records, click here.

How Did We Figure All of This Out?

There are more than 2000 Hot Stamper reviews on this blog. Do you know how we learned so much about so many records?

Simple. We ran thousands and thousands of record experiments under carefully controlled conditions, and we continue to run scores of them week in and week out to this very day.

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Dorati and Mercury Did Not Produce a Good Eroica

More of the music of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Beethoven

The sound of this 1959 Mercury recording was unacceptable. It was crude and shrill. It seems that many early Mercury recordings suffer from these shortcomings.

Our favorite Beethoven 3rd for sound and performance is the one Solti recorded for Decca in 1959.

1959 just happens to be one of the truly great years for quality analog recordings, as can be seen from this amazing group of albums, all was recorded or released that year.

This Mercury might be passable on an old school system, but it was too unpleasant to be played on the high quality modern equipment we use.

There are quite a number of others that we’ve run into over the years with similar shortcomings. Here they are, broken down by label.

  • London/Decca records with weak sound or performances
  • Mercury records with weak sound or performances
  • RCA records with weak sound or performances

Have You Noticed…

If you’re a fan of Mercury Living Presence records — and what right-thinking audiophile wouldn’t be? — have you noticed that many of them, this one for example, don’t sound very good?

If you’re an audiophile with good equipment, you should have.

But did you? Or did you buy into the hype surrounding these rare pressings and just ignore the problems with the sound?

There is plenty of hype surrounding the hundreds of Heavy Vinyl pressings currently in print. I read a lot about how wonderful their sound is, but when I actually play them, I rarely find them to be any better than mediocre, and most of them are downright awful.

It seems as if the audiophile public has bought completely into the hype for these modern Heavy Vinyl pressings. Audiophiles have too often made the mistake of approaching these records without the slightest trace of skepticism. How could so many be fooled so badly? Surely some of these people have good enough equipment to allow them to hear how bad these records sound.

I would say Mercury’s track record during the ’50s and ’60s is a pretty good one, offering (potentially) excellent sound for roughly one out of every three titles or so.

But that means that odds are there would be a lot of dogs in their catalog. This is definitely one of them.

To see the 50+ Living Presence classical titles we’ve reviewed to date, click here.

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Respighi / Ancient Dances and Airs / Dorati

More of the music of Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936)

More Mercury Living Presence Records


  • Amazing Living Presence sound for this TAS-approved Super Disc, with both sides earning STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them
  • This spectacular Demo Disc recording is big, clear, rich, dynamic, transparent and energetic – here is the Mercury sound we love, and that is so hard to find
  • Mercury rarely recorded strings properly but here the rich, textured sheen sounds tonally correct and, above all, natural

Both sides of this TAS List pressing have amazing Hot Stamper sound, so much richer and sweeter and less strident than the typical copy you might find. (I must admit the Mercury approach to sound has not worn as well as I might have hoped. When it comes to the Big Three from the Golden Age, these days we prefer London, followed by RCA, then Mercury.)

Of course the music is wonderful, with Respighi looking back and paying homage to the music and the musical structures of the past. This is no Pines of Rome.

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Rachmaninoff – Piano Concerto No. 3 / Janis / Dorati

The music of Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)

Reviews and Commentaries for Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concertos

  • Stunning sound for this classic Byron Janis Mercury album, with a Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one mated with an outstanding Double Plus (A++) side two
  • The piano is huge and weighty, the strings rich and highly resolving, and the overall presentation is powerful, balanced, dynamic and exciting like few other piano concerto recordings we have ever had the pleasure to audition
  • Not only is this the consistently best sounding copy we have had to offer in years, but we are happy to report that the vinyl is reasonably quiet for a vintage Mercury stereo pressing
  • If you have the system to play a record as big and powerful as this Mercury from 1961, we cannot recommend it any more highly
  • 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.

Not only is the sound amazing — yes, it’s on the TAS Super Disc list, and for good reason: a copy as good as this one really is a Super Disc — but this copy has another vitally important characteristic that most copies of the record do not: no Inner Groove Distortion.

We can’t begin to count the times we have had to return (or toss) a copy of these famous Byron Janis records because the piano breakup for the last inch or so of the record was just unbearable. That’s a sound no serious listener could possibly tolerate, yet I would venture to guess that a great many Mercury Piano Concerto recordings suffer from this kind of groove damage.

Enough about those typically bad copies, let’s talk about how good this one is!

This is a reasonably quiet early Mercury Plum label stereo pressing of one of Byron Janis’s most famous performances (along with the Rachmaninoff 1st. It’s a longtime member of the TAS Super Disc list).

The sound is rich and natural, with lovely transparency and virtually no smear to the strings, horns or piano. What an amazing recording! What an amazing piece of music.

The recording is explosively dynamic and on this copy, the sound was positively jumping out of the speakers. In addition, the brass and strings are full-bodied, with practically no stridency, an unusual feat the Mercury engineers seem to have accomplished while in Russia.

Big, rich sound can sometimes present problems for piano recordings. You want to hear the percussive qualities of the instrument, but few copies pull off that trick without sounding thin. This one showed us a piano that was both clear and full-bodied.

With huge amounts of hall space, weight and energy, this is DEMO DISC QUALITY SOUND by any standard. Once the needle has dropped you will quickly forget about the sound (and all the money you paid to get it!) and simply find yourself in the presence of some of the greatest musicians of their generation, captured on the greatest analog recordings of all time.

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