Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Claude Debussy Available Now
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Maurice Ravel Available Now
In 2024 we did a shootout for this recording of quartets, LSC 2413, our first in 19 years.
For the shootout winning pressing, we wrote the following:
Juilliard String Quartet’s performance of these wonderful classical works appears on the site for only the second time ever, here with INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades on both sides of this original Shaded Dog pressing.
Having just played some killer copies of Death and the Maiden, we’re tempted to say that this Debussy record has the potential for even better sound — it’s richer and sweeter, but every bit as real and immediate as any chamber recording we know of.
Here are the notes for the actual record we played. Side one really blew our minds, earning a grade of at least 3+.
The second place finisher may not have been quite as good on side one, but it was still so good that it had no problem earning the full three pluses. It had the same stampers as the copy above by the way.
Side two however lacked the space of the very best pressings we played, and we marked it down one half plus for that shortcoming. Although it was “so tubey and 3-D” it did not have “all the space but not hot at all and natural and sweet.”
It’s very unlikely that the person who bought this copy would feel there was any problem with side two. We had two killer side two’s to play against each other back to back, and that’s about the only way these kinds of very subtle differences can be recognized, assuming you have a system that can resolve the space of the recording at an extremely high level to begin with.
The big rooms with high ceilings that systems like those require are not usually found in listening rooms that have not been custom built.
More on this wonderful record:
The Living Stereo sound here is Tubey Magical, lively and clear, with the kind of transparency that puts living, breathing musicians right in your listening room in the way that only the best vintage vinyl pressings can.
Lewis Layton engineered this recording (along with Ed Begley) and he nailed it, perfectly capturing the rich, textured sheen on the strings, the hallmark of Living Stereo sound in the 50s and 60s.
He recorded both the Schubert (LSC 2378) mentioned above and this wonderful Debussy/Ravel record for RCA in 1960 — it would be quite the understatement to say he had a gift for recordings of this kind.
Another superb recording from the 60s, brought to you by your vinyl-loving friends at Better Records.
It’s an exceptional Living Stereo all analog recording from 1960 – nothing else sounds like it.
When you’ve played as many Living Stereo titles as we have (250+ and counting), you’re bound to run into this kind of Demo Disc sound from time to time – it’s what makes record collecting fun.
It’s an amazing find, the kind of record we live for here at Better Records.
