Mercury (Orchestral) – Reviews, Commentaries, Letters, etc.

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.