Top Producers – John Pfeiffer

Beethoven / Haydn / The Heifetz-Piatigorsky Concerts

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin

Reviews and Commentaries for Recordings Featuring Jascha Heifetz

This is a lovely sounding pressing of cello and violin, with smooth, natural, tonally-correct sound and correctly-sized instruments, something you don’t hear often on recordings with Heifetz. They tend to have huge violins and small orchestras.

In these chamber works perhaps the engineers had an easier time of getting it right.

The sound is transparent, spacious and three-dimensional in the best Living Stereo tradition.

If you love the sound of violin and cello, played by virtuosi of the highest order, this is the record for you.

Side One

Beethoven: Piano Trio, Op. 1, No. 1

Side Two

Haydn: Divertimento for Cello and Orchestra 
Rozsa: Tema con Variazioni

This is an older classical/orchestral review

Most of the older reviews you see are for records that did not go through the shootout process, the revolutionary approach to finding better sounding pressings we started developing in the early 2000s and have since turned into a veritable science.

(more…)

Sibelius – Violin Concerto / Heifetz / Hendl

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin

Superb Recordings with Jascha Heifetz Performing

xxx

  • With excellent Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides, this copy of the Sibelius Violin Concerto boasts seriously good Living Stereo sonics from 1961 and a fiery performance from Heifetz in his prime
  • It’s some of the best sound we have ever heard for the work, right up there with Ricci’s on Decca/London
  • The nothing-less-than-breathtaking performance by Heifetz may raise this one to the rank of First Among Equals for those of you who prize immediacy and energy in your violin recordings
  • If you have one of our killer Hot Stampers of the Beethoven or Tchaikovsky violin concertos, you know exactly the sound I am talking about
  • “In the easier and looser concerto forms invented by Mendelssohn and Schumann I have not met a more original, a more masterly, and a more exhilarating work than the Sibelius violin concerto.”
  • Here is a list of records that, like this one, contain some of our Favorite Performances with Top Quality Sound
  • 1960 was a great years for classical recordings – other Must Own Orchestral releases can be found here.

Early Shaded Dog pressings of Heifetz’s records rarely survived in audiophile playing condition. Top quality early pressings in clean condition come our way at most a few times a year, which means shootouts for them get done infrequently. There are hundreds, even thousands, of clean, vintage classical pressings sitting in our stockroom waiting for a few more copies to come our way so that we can finally do a shootout. These things cannot be rushed.

As for the sound, it’s practically impossible to find the richly textured, natural string tone offered here on anything but the vintage pressings produced in the 50s and 60s. Record making may be a lost art, but as long as we have these wonderful vintage pressings to play, it’s an art that is not being lost on us.

(more…)

Chopin – Piano Concerto No. 2 – Rubinstein / Wallenstein

Living Stereo Titles Available Now

200+ Reviews of Living Stereo Records

The original version of LSC 2265 as pictured is known as The Rubinstein Story. It comes with a deluxe gatefold cover and a lovely illustrated booklet tucked into an inner flap with biographical information about Rubinstein and commentary about the music of Chopin.

Of course we Hot Stamper aficionados want to know how it sounds, and the good news here is that side one is WONDERFUL. We awarded it the Super Hot grade of A++. The piano just sounds more REAL on this side than it does on the later pressing we played. It’s clear, solid and present, and the tonality is perfection.

Those of you who know your shaded dogs no doubt have had a few problems with your Rubinstein pressings in the past being too midrangy and forward, a sound that Rubinstein supposedly insisted on for his records. Not so on this side one I am happy to report. The sound is overflowing with Tubey Magic.

Ah, but side two is much more like the typical Rubinstein record, and in this case that means a letdown, with a too-hard sounding piano, the result of an upper-midrange boost. It’s spacious and the vinyl is quiet but the piano does not sound like it does on side one, oh well. One good side is pretty hard to find so consider this one a minor victory.