Top Engineers – James Lock

Mehta’s Petrushka Is Just Not Very Good

Hot Stamper Pressings of Orchestral Imports on Decca & London

We’re big fans of Decca/London Records in general, but in this case the sound and the performances of this album are simply not good enough. 

We had three original UK pressed copies of CS 6554 and none of them sounded right to us.

What’s worse, Mehta and the Los Angeles Phil. play the work poorly. How this album got released I have no idea. Maybe it was a case of a contract is a contract. Or maybe others like it and we are simply wrong about the sound and the performance. Who can say?

This London might be passable on an old school system, but it was too unpleasant to be played on the high quality modern equipment we (and we hope our customers) 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.

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A Lively Hall Creates the Right Sound for Dances of Old Vienna

Hot Stamper Pressings on Two of Our Favorite Labels, Decca & London

Wow, what a find! Dances of Old Vienna is a WONDERFUL sounding record with vintage Decca / London sound. Even as late as 1968 Decca was still able to produce recordings that are tonally correct from top to bottom and full of Tubey Magic.

There is not a trace of hyped-up sound to be found on this record. It’s unbelievably spacious and three-dimensional, with depth to rival any recording you may own.

The sound is especially spacious partly because the recording is of a fairly small ensemble, playing in a lively hall, exactly the kind of venue in which this music was meant to be heard.

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Debussy – La Mer / Ansermet

More of the music of Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

  • A vintage Decca import pressing of these wonderful orchestral pieces that was doing just about everything right, with both sides earning seriously good Double Plus (A++) grades
  • La Mer is on side one and it is lovely – rich and sweet, tonally correct, dynamic, and extended on the top and the bottom
  • Two other major works found on this compilation are Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and Clair De Lune
  • The richness of the strings is displayed here beautifully for fans of the classical Golden Age – it’s practically impossible to hear that kind of string sound on any recording made in the last thirty years
  •  When you hear how good this record sounds, you may have a hard time believing that it’s a budget reissue from 1972, but that’s precisely what it is. Even more extraordinary, the right copies are the ones that win shootouts

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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.

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Prokofiev / Scythian Suite / Ansermet

More of the Music of Sergei Prokofiev

  • Both sides of this original London pressing of CS 6538 had the big, lively and rich sound we’d been waiting for, earning KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus grades or close them
  • It’s also remarkably quiet — at the high end of Mint Minus Minus — a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • Everything that we listen for in a great classical recording can be heard on this copy – it’s immediate, dynamic, very low distortion, spacious, and alive
  • The bass deserves special mention here – you rarely hear recordings from the 50s and early 60s, the kind of LPs that were mastered with tubes, of course, having this kind of truly deep, punchy bass

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Varese / Arcana, Ionisation and more / Mehta

More Decca and London Pressings

  • This wonderful orchestral spectacular returns to the site after a 2+ year hiatus, here with STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on this vintage London pressing
  • Both sides are open, high-rez, and spacious, with depth like you will not believe – this recording of the LA Phil is truly spectacular (and we say that about very few LA Phil recordings outside of this one)
  • Dynamic, huge, lively, transparent and natural – with a record this good, your ability to suspend disbelief will require practically no effort at all

Superb sound for this crazy 20th Century music, featuring wild and wacky works which rely almost exclusively on percussion (not one, not two, but three bass drums!). My favorite piece here may be Ionisation, which uses real sirens (the Old School ones cranked by hand) as part of Varese’s uniquely specialized instrumental array.

The speed of the percussion is also critical to its accurate reproduction. No two pieces of electronics will get this record to sound the same, and some will fail miserably. If vintage tube gear is your idea of good sound, this record may help you to better understand where its shortcomings lie.

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Holst / The Planets / Mehta

More of the music of Gustav Holst (1874-1934)

More Orchestral Spectaculars

  • This early London pressing of Holst’s phenomenal Magnum Opus boasts stunning sound from first note to last
  • These sides are clear, full-bodied and present, with plenty of space around the players, the unmistakable sonic hallmark of the properly mastered, properly pressed vintage analog LP
  • Vibrant orchestrations, top quality sound and scratch-free surfaces combine for an astounding listening experience of this TAS-approved recording

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Strauss / Schubert – Dances of Old Vienna / Boskovsky

More Classical and Orchestral Recordings

  • An original UK Decca pressing of this wonderful sounding record boasting STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades from first note to last
  • Tonally correct from top to bottom and full of Tubey Magic, it’s unbelievably spacious and three-dimensional, with depth to rival any recording you may own
  • The violin (played by Boskovsky himself) is immediate, real and lively here – there is a transparency and ease to the sound that is not often heard in recordings from any era, making this a very special record indeed
  • Gordon Parry and James Lock handled the engineering duties for Decca and their work here is hard to fault

Wow, what a find! This is a WONDERFUL sounding record with vintage Decca/London sound. There is not a trace of hyped-up sound to be found on this record.

So spacious! This is a fairly small ensemble, not a huge orchestra, playing in a lively hall, exactly the kind of hall in which this music was meant to be heard. The reason everything on this disc sounds right is that the venue, the sound and the music are authentic to these works in practically every detail.

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Rachmaninoff / The Complete Piano Concertos – Wild / Horenstein

More of the Music of Sergei Rachmaninoff

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  • An excellent copy of this wonderful original 4 LP Box Set with roughly Double Plus (A++) orchestral sound across these 8 magical sides
  • The vinyl is as quiet as we can find it – like most Shaded Dogs and Mercs, Mint Minus Minus is about the best you can hope for
  • We have been readying this shootout for probably twenty years – we had 8 box sets to play, 32 discs in all, searching for the best sound we could find on these famous TAS List records
  • There is not much chance we will be able to do such a comprehensive shootout in the near future — we find at most one nice set per year, which means the next big shootout is a very long way off
  • Wild’s playing of the Rhapsody On A Theme Of Paganini here is one of our favorites on vinyl
  • Some old record collectors (like me) say classical recording quality ain’t what it used to be – here’s all the proof anyone with two working ears and top quality audiophile equipment needs to make the case
  • “Rachmaninoff’s music . . . changes as the composer goes along, moving from Romantic to a tentative Modernism in such works as the fourth piano concerto and the Symphonic Dances. In this sense, he walks a path similar to Puccini’s, incorporating new approaches to extend that [which was] already essentially his. Certainly, the works here show these changes, as the composer picks up more experience, both in writing and in hearing music.”

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Star Wars, Close Encounters and Other Multi-Miked Messes

Decca and London Hot Stamper Pressings Available Now

This Mobile Fidelity LP contains the music of Star Wars and Close Encounters, conducted by Zubin Mehta. The MoFi pressing is far more transparent than the London pressings we have auditioned of the album, even the ones half-speed mastered by Stan Ricker himself.

Yes, he cut the original Londons! At Half Speed! (We’ve also played some later pressings not mastered by Stan, of course. Who can predict which version would sound the best?)

It’s still one of the better MoFi remasters, all things considered. The music, to these ears, has always been hi-fi-ish schlock, and the recording itself is too multi-miked to be taken seriously. It sounds far too much like a bad Phase IV recording, and we know whereof we speak when it comes to Phase IV, good or bad. We’ve played them by the score.

This famous record from the Top Seven of the TAS Super Disc List has the same problem, but I never hear anybody mention it. Why that is I cannot imagine, other than our favorite explanation for just about everything that seems to fly under the audiophile radar, or perhaps a better description would be flying over the heads of the self-appointed audiophile cognoscenti, our old standby, reviewer malpractice.

Bottom line, a loser, but the original Londons in our experience are even worse!

For more on the subject of opacity on record, click here and here.

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