Mercury Orchestral – Commentaries

How Good Is The Birds on Golden Import Reissue?

Hot Stamper Mercury Pressings Available Now

These days, most Golden Import reissues we play sound much too much like the bulk of the Philips pressings we’ve played over the years: smooth, smeary, compressed, recessed and veiled. 

Can’t say what this one sounds like, it sold many years ago, but I would not expect very many Golden Imports to sound good to me now.

More than anything the changes we hear in the records we play now tie into the idea of progress in audio, since without progress the records that sounded good to me in 2006 would still sound good to me now, and I’m glad to say they don’t.

Live and Learn is our motto, onward and upward, and we have made that approach to audio the very foundation of our business.

If you are stuck in a Heavy Vinyl rut, we can help you get out of it. We did precisely that for these folks, and we can do it for you.

You may of course not be aware that you are stuck in a rut. Most audiophiles aren’t. The best way out of that predicament is to hear how mediocre these modern records sound compared to the vintage Hot Stampers we offer. Once you hear the difference, your days of buying newly remastered releases will most likely be over. Even if our pricey curated pressings are beyond your budget, you can avail yourself of the methods we describe to find killer records on your own.

A TAS List Mistake?

The famous Bolero on the TAS List had seemed to me to be a Harry Pearson mistake from the old days, a record he clearly liked at one time and simply had not played later in life on better equipment.

In 2006, mostly what we were doing in the commentary you see below was bashing the Just Plain Awful Speakers Corner Mercury series that seemed to please everyone else. We thought those remastered pressings were disgraceful, the worst of the worst. Every title from that series that I played was so wrong as to defy understanding. I stopped after two. Two was all I could take.

And where, may I ask, are those awful Mercury’s now?

On the trash heap of Heavy Vinyl Rip-offs from the past I hope. I hope — audiophiles seem to like so many bad sounding records that it would not surprise me if there were still some die-hard fans of the series.

How bad does a stereo have to be to keep you from hearing what is wrong with the sound of these awful records?

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British Band Classics Vol. 2 – The First Classical Record I Bought as an Audiophile

Hot Stamper Mercury Pressings Available Now

British Band Classics Volume Two was the first Mercury classical LP I ever bought. After hearing it at an audiophile friend’s house I went down to Tower Records and found one in the bin. I think the price was $3.99 for the Golden Import, the same pressing you see pictured, which of course was all that was available as the real Mercury pressings we long out of print.

That was what I had heard, so I had no idea what the original even looked like, and of course I had no idea that the original sounded dramatically better, or that one day I would be selling original Mercury pressings like it for many hundreds of dollars.

This was the mid-70s, a time when you could walk into a record store and buy new records, not long before HP would create a feeding frenzy for vintage Mercs and other Golden Age recordings.

As I’m writing this, I can picture myself in the store. I can still remember that the clerk who helped me find the record commented that I should have come in the week before when the record was on sale for $1 off. I certainly feel like I got my money’s worth that day. This album went on to become one of my personal treasures. I used to marvel at the way the wind instruments actually sounded like the pipes of an organ. (I wasn’t really sure at first that there wasn’t an organ playing somewhere on the record. I didn’t know much about classical music then. )

When I went to England a number of years ago I attended a wind band concert in the park not far from Buckingham Palace. Out in the open the sound was very sweet but dull — the high frequencies dissipate in the open air. It was one of my early lessons in audio. Live sound is not always what it’s cracked up to be, and recorded sound can be amazing — on the right stereo with the right pressing of the right recording.

Much of the credit for the sound on this album must go to Fennell. I’ve been told that he was a stickler for making sure everyone was perfectly in tune and playing correctly within the ensemble. That’s exactly what you hear when you play a record like this — it’s practically sonic perfection.

Also, if you ever see a clean copy of Vol. 1, which is only available in Mono, pick it up. If it’s cut right, it is out of this world.

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The Brahms Violin Concerto – Unplug or Suffer the Consequences!

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin Available Now

The massed strings here, such as those found at the opening, are close-miked and immediate as befits the Mercury recording style.

Your electricity had better be good when you play this record, because it presents a test many of you will have trouble passing at even moderate levels. 

We’ve often encouraged our readers and customers to go about unplugging things in their homes in order to test the effect of clean electricity on their playback systems.

The opening of this record is a perfect example of the kind of material everyone should be testing with in order to hear these changes.

I’d be very surprised if the strings on this record don’t sound noticeably better after you’ve unplugged a few things in your house, and the more the better.

The effect should not be the least bit subtle. It’s certainly not subtle in our listening room.

The same would be true for any of the tweaks we recommend. The Townshend Seismic Platform or Hallographs would be a godsend for proper playback of this record. Hard to imagine what it would sound like without them. (To tell you the truth, we don’t really want to know.)

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Tchaikovsky / Romeo & Juliet – On the Orange Label?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Classical Masterpieces Available Now

UPDATE 2025

This is a very old review from from way back in 2011 which we think is wildly off the mark.

I can’t remember when was the last time we played an Mercury Orange Label pressing that had sound competitive with the best earlier pressings.

Back in 2011 we liked reissue pressings of Golden Age recordings a lot more than we do now, so take the review below with a huge grain of salt. Only the advent of top quality cleaning equipment and much improved playback made it possible for us to hear the earlier pressings in all their glory.

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.

There are plenty of live and learn entries about these records. This one from 14+ years ago could (probably, the record is long gone and not around to be played) not be more wrong.

Our advice in 2025 would be to avoid any pressing on the Orange Mercury label.

We played an Orange label late reissue of this title a while back and had this to say about it:

DEMO QUALITY thanks to superb low distortion mastering. Another very exciting Mercury recording. Some of these Orange Label pressings, which are cut with much better cutting equipment than was available when the original album was released, can show you just how good the master tape really is.

This kind of sound is not easy to cut, and it appears that the amplifiers of the day just weren’t up to it. This copy gets rid of all the cutter-head distortion and coloration and allows you to hear what the Mercury engineers accomplished.

Dorati breathes fire into the famous Tchaikovsky Romeo and Juliet on side 2. Unfortunately, the mastering on this copy is not very good. The sound is bright and dry.

This work frequently is recorded with harsh sound; the orchestration must be difficult to capture on tape. But Mercury here seems to have managed a feat few others can claim. I’m guessing the earlier pressings have too much cutter distortion to get this one right; I don’t recall the other copies I’ve heard sounding this good.

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Love for Three Oranges Suite – Our Review from Years Back

More of the music of Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

Huge hall space, wonderfully textured strings – it’s easy to forget just how REAL a recording like this from 1957 can sound.

With almost none of the Mercury nasality on the strings or the brass, we were knocked out by the sound and, of course, the legendary performance.

My notes for side one, complete with exclamation marks, read:

  • Big hall!
  • Transparent!
  • Zero smear!
  • Dynamic!
  • Huge Bass!
  • Realistic!

If that sounds like the kind of record you would like to play for yourself, here it is.

The Scythian Suite was also very good but it seems to get a bit congested (tape overload? compressor overload?) on the loudest parts. It does sound amazing in the quieter passages. It’s not distorted, just brash. It’s very dynamic of course, as is side one. That’s Mercury’s sound.

This was obviously a record the previous owner did not care for. We acquired a copy of LSC 2449 in the same batch, but unfortunately that was a record the owner must have loved — it’s just plain worn out. (We kept it as a reference copy for a future shootout which, considering how rare the record is, may never come to pass.)

In the heyday of the ’90s, when these records were all the rage, this copy would have sold for at least $1000 and probably more. And the copy that sold for that would have been very unlikely to sound as good as this one, if only for the fact that cleaning technologies have advanced so much over the last ten years or so.

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The Nutcracker – Side to Side Notes Included

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Our favorite combination of performance and sound can be found on the Decca recording of the work from 1959 performed by Ansermet and the Suisse Romande.

This review was written for our last (and probably final) shootout for the Dorati from about ten years ago. We no longer buy these Mercury pressings because the vinyl tends to be too noisy for most audiophiles. I have a high tolerance for noise, but most of our customers do not.

Hot Stamper pressings of Mercury classical and orchestral recordings can be found here.

Click on the link to see more records for which we’ve detailed the strengths and weaknesses of a specific shootout copy.

Our Review from from the 2010s

This London Symphony recording is without a doubt THE BEST SOUNDING Nutcracker we have ever played here at Better Records, and that includes not only the full ballet but the suites and excerpts as well. The sound in a word is GLORIOUS. This copy, with 8 1/2 pluses total for the four sides, has DEMO DISC quality sound on three out of four sides.

We shot out nine original maroon label copies (and one oval label Philips pressing) so we had our work cut out for us when it came to this masterwork of Tchaikovsky’s.

It was an absolute JOY to hear his sublime orchestration recorded so faithfully and naturally by the Mercury team, using 35MM film no less. 

A top performance with top quality sound. Let’s get right to each of the four sides.

Side One

A TRIPLE PLUS sound, the best in show. The stage is huge and 3-D, there’s tons of energy, the string texture — always a worry with Mercury — is excellent as well, and the sound of the orchestra is full-bodied and solid.

The sound of the strings is what put this side over the top. When have you ever heard Mercury strings sound so rich and tubey-magical as they do here? We were gobsmacked at the lushness of the string tone, something you hear often wiht Golden Age recordings on Decca and RCA but almost never on Mercury.

Side Two

A+ to A++, the weakest side here. Some smear to the strings and a bit too much of that old school tubey-magical overly smooth sound.

Side Three

At A++ this was another wonderful side, with especially full-bodied, solid horns. The strings got a little ragged when playing in the loudest passages, so we took off a plus. Otherwise this side is killer and getting it right from top to bottom.

Side Four

A little smear but so rich and tubey magical, this one had to earn at least two pluses for sound, A++. The sound is wall to wall and so sweet. With a little more pluck to the harp and bite to the strings this one would have been White Hot.

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Adam / Giselle / Fistoulari

Hot Stamper Mercury Pressings Available Now

This pressing has been remastered by Philips from a Golden Age Classical Recording by Mercury, originally released in 1961.

This Mercury Golden Import 2 LP set has VERY GOOD sound. The average copy tends to be a bit dark and recessed, but this one is refreshingly free from those problems.

It’s not quite up to Hot Stamper status — it might have earned a grade of 1+ — but it is a very enjoyable record and worth picking up at the right price.