1960-must-own-classical

Dvorak – Slavonic Dances / Martinon

More of the Music of Dvorak

  • Martinon and the LSO’s lively performance of Slavonic Dances debuts on the site with big, rich and Tubey Magical Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) Living Stereo sound throughout this original Shaded Dog pressing
  • 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
  • We’ve been trying to get this shootout going for many years – some of the pressings we’ve come across have been absolutely some of the best sounding Living Stereo titles we’ve ever played
  • If we ever create a Living Stereo Top Ten, this album will be a serious contender of the honor
  • This record will have you asking why so few Living Stereo pressings actually do what this one does. The more critical listeners among you will recognize that this is a very special copy indeed. Everyone else will just enjoy the hell out of it.
  • Marks and problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these early pressings, but once you hear just how incredible sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and pops and just be swept away by the music

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Ballet Music From The Opera – Yet Another Reissue that Trounces the Original

More of the Music of Saint-Saens

More of the Music of Mussorgsky

  • You will find superb sound throughout this vintage Victrola 60s reissue, one of the best in the entire series
  • Both of these sides are big, lively, and dynamic, with the lovely bells and other percussive elements benefitting immensely from the wonderfully extended top
  • The sonics here have the power to transport you completely, with solid imaging and a real sense of space, qualities that allow us to forget we are in our listening rooms and not in the concert hall

Pay attention to the brass — yes, it may have some tubey smear, but listen to how huge and powerful it is.

Drop the needle and watch (or listen) as the sound comes jumping out of your speakers.

Modern remastered records never do that.

These Decca-derived recordings are highly sought after, and with good reason. It’s hard to imagine a more wonderful audiophile disc, both in terms of the program and the quality of the sound.

This is the precisely the kind of big, bold, lifelike sound Decca engineers were able to capture on tape, and RCA mastering engineers were able to master from that analog tape, 60+ years ago.

The original RCA (LSC 2400) sells for many, many hundreds of dollars in clean condition and may not have especially good sound, if our experience is any guide. Some of the ones we’ve played have been quite shrill. In other words, you could easily spend a ton of money on one and end up with a bad sounding collector piece destined to sit on your shelf for years between playings.

Or you could buy the Classic 180g reissue and end up with one of the biggest disasters in the history of remastering. More about that later.

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Stravinsky / The Firebird – Dorati

More of the Music of Igor Stravinsky

  • With STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on both sides, this early Mercury pressing of Stravinsky’s Classical Masterpiece is doing everything right
  • One listen to either side of this pressing and you’ll see why this is one of the top Mercury titles of all time
  • The Heavy Vinyl reissues – at 45 or 33, on one disc or four – barely begin to capture the energy and drive Dorati brings to the work
  • “The magic lies in the elaborate orchestration and the excitingly uneven rhythmic writing. Stravinsky changes the orchestration of his themes at each repetition, breaks them down into their constituent parts, pushes their accents across the bar-line, and moves them out of sync with their own accompaniments.”
  • 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.
  • 1960 was a great year for classical recordings – other Must Own Orchestral releases can be found here.

This is one of the more challenging classical shootouts for us to get going. At least 80% of the copies we buy these days — for many, many hundreds of dollars each, I might add — go right back to the seller. This is one of the more reasonably quiet copies we’ve come across recently, making it a special one indeed.

Both sides are so clear, alive, and transparent, with huge hall space extending wall to wall and floor to ceiling. Zero compression.

This pressing boasts rich, sweet strings, especially for a Mercury. Both sides really get quiet in places, a sure sign that all the dynamics of the master tape were protected in the mastering of this copy.

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Wagner / Excerpts from Operas / Dorati

More of the Music of Richard Wagner

  • With two solid Double Plus (A++) sides or close to them, we guarantee you’ve never heard this underrated Wagner album sound remotely as good as it does here
  • It’s also fairly quiet at the high end Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • Mercury is one of the few labels that can bring to life the power of the orchestra that Wagner’s music demands, and the engineers (Robert Eberenz, et al) do not disappoint (particularly on side two)
  • One of the better Watford Town Hall recordings (The Firebird would be another one), this album was recorded in 1959 and it fully captures the magic of the venue as only an All Tube Recording / Mastering Chain from that era can (also particularly on side two)
  • If you’re a fan of orchestral showpieces such as these, this Mercury recording from 1960 belongs in your collection.

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Liszt / The Music of Franz Liszt / Fiedler

More of the Music of Franz Liszt

  • This vintage Shaded Dog pressing of these wonderful orchestral showpieces boasts two outstanding Double Plus (A++) sides or close to them
  • 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
  • Classic superb Living Stereo sound on this side one – big and open with an especially clean and extended top end (great fun on those huge cymbal crashes Liszt favored), and side two is not far behind in all those areas
  • Powerful, rich, dynamic and life-like orchestral reproduction, set in a huge hall – no Heavy Vinyl pressing can hold a candle to sound as good as this (particularly on side one)
  • “The Hungarian-born composer and pianist Franz Liszt was strongly influenced by the music heard in his youth, particularly Hungarian folk music, with its unique gypsy scale, rhythmic spontaneity and direct, seductive expression.”
  • If you’re a fan of orchestral showpieces such as these, this Living Stereo from 1960 belongs in your collection.

This is, in our opinion, one of the most underrated Living Stereo treasures in the Golden Age canon — but not by this critic (here reviewing the CD):

In the early days of stereo, RCA released an all-Liszt LP by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops that has remained in my memory as one of the finest things the popular maestro ever committed to disc…

Two works, the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 and the high energy Rákoczy March, have been out for some time, coupled with “Hi-Fi Fiedler”. Now RCA has added to this current disc the two main pieces, Mazeppa and Les Preludes, from the original collection. They are as wonderful as ever – among the best, if not the best, performances of this music. Fiedler doesn’t dawdle or toy around with the melodies; he lets Liszt’s Romantic vision speak for itself, helping it along with brisk tempos and incisive phrasing. Seldom have the fanfares in Les Préludes had such bite and majesty.

ClassicsToday

The richly textured, rosin-on-the-bow lower strings on this record are to die for.

Find me a modern record with that sound and I will eat it. And by “modern record” we hasten to include both modern recordings and modern remasterings of older recordings. NO ONE alive today can make a record that sound like this. To call it a lost art is to understand something that few vinyl-loving audiophiles appear to have fully grasped since the advent of the Modern Reissue, which is simply this: compared head to head, they are simply not competitive.

After twenty years of trying and literally hundreds of failed examples, both the boutique and major labels of today have yet to make a record that sounds as powerful or as life-like as this RCA from the old days.

Fortunately for us record lovers and collectors, we at Better Records are not trying to make a record sound the way these sides do, we’re just trying to find ones that do, and folks, we found some very, very good sides here.

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Albeniz / Iberia – Another Knockout of a Recording, Conducted by Ernst Ansermet

More of the Music of Albeniz

  • This superb classical release (only the second copy to hit the site in close to two and a half years) boasts big, bold, dynamic Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout this early London pressing
  • 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 you will find the huge hall, correct string tone, spacious, open sound that are hallmarks to all the best vintage orchestral pressings
  • Listen to the plucked basses – clear, not smeary, with no sacrifice in richness. Take it from us, the guys that play classical recordings by the score, this is hard for a record to do!
  • Ernst Ansermet conducted some of the best sounding records ever made — here are some of the ones we’ve reviewed

The sound of this copy is so transparent, undistorted, three-dimensional and real, without any sacrifice in solidity, richness or Tubey Magic, that we knew we had a real winner on our hands as soon as the needle hit the groove.

We were impressed with the fact that it excelled in so many areas of reproduction. The illusion of disappearing speakers is one of the more attractive aspects of the sound here, pulling the listener into the space of the concert hall in an especially engrossing way.

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Sibelius – Violin Concerto / Heifetz / Hendl

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin

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  • Solid Double Plus (A++) or BETTER Living Stereo sonics from 1960 bring to life this fiery performance from Heifetz in his prime on this early Shaded Dog pressing
  • 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
  • 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 link to more records like this one containing some of our favorite orchestral 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.

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Bizet / Saint-Saens / Carmen Fantaisie / Introduction And Rondo Capriccioso / Ricci

More of the Music of Georges Bizet

  • You’ll find solid Double Plus (A++) sound throughout this early London LP
  • This is a spectacular recording, and one of the Greatest Violin Showpiece Albums of All Time
  • It is certainly a record that belongs in every right-thinking audiophile’s collection. If you’re on our site and taking the time to read this, that probably means you
  • Ruggiero Ricci is superb throughout – we know of no better performance of these works than those found on this very record
  • 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

Ricci’s playing of the Bizet-Sarasate Carmen Fantasie is out of this world. There is no greater performance on record, in my opinion, and few works that have as much audiophile appeal.

The Average Copy

When you play a copy of this record and hear a smeared, veiled violin, don’t be too surprised. This is not the least bit unusual, in fact it’s pretty much par for the course. The soundstage may be huge, spacious and 3-D. It is on most copies.

But what good is a record of violin showpieces if the violin doesn’t sound right?

Sides One and Two

These two sides can show you how good the violin — and the whole orchestra — can sound. They’re tonally correct from top to bottom, transparent and sweet.

These pieces are less about the “violin-in-your-lap” effect and more about the violin as an integrated member of the orchestra.

These sides had plenty of a quality that goes a long way in the world of classical music. As we went through the various copies, we noticed that the sound on the best sides was especially relaxed. (Compare that to the typical Classic Records Heavy Vinyl pressing, which, on the relaxation scale of one to ten, rates a lot closer to one than it does to ten. Between one and two, probably.)

Once you spot the relaxed copies, you find they tend to do every other thing well, and that’s what it takes to score top grades in shootouts — doing everything well.

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Mendelssohn / Symphony No. 3 / Maag

More of the music of Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

More music conducted by Peter Maag

  • With two seriously good Double Plus (A++) sides, you’ll have a hard time finding a copy of Mendelssohn’s famed concert overture and orchestral symphony that sounds remotely as good as this vintage Ace of Diamonds pressing
  • A truly superb recording with huge, spacious, dynamic, lively sound – Tubey Magical richness is a big plus too
  • There is a rosiny 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
  • When you hear how good this record sounds, you may have a hard time believing that it’s a budget reissue from the 60s, but that’s precisely what it is
  • Even more extraordinary, the right copies are the ones that win shootouts
  • This is one of our favorite performances with top quality sound

Audiophiles have known of this record’s sublime sonic qualities for decades. As our stereos get better, so do amazingly powerful recordings such as this one.

Both sides of this record have that classic Decca rich, sweet sound. It’s not for everybody, it’s probably not the sound one would hear in a concert hall, but we love it and so do many audiophiles.

The performance here by Peter Maag and London Symphony Orchestra is legendary and definitive. The sound is perfectly suited for this music, with massed strings to die for. This is classic Tubey Magical Decca orchestral sound.

If you want immediacy, buy a Mercury. If you want luscious, rich string tone, this vintage Ace of Diamonds reissue should be right up your alley. This is a sweetheart of a record, full of the Tubey Magic for which Decca recordings are justly famous.

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Mozart – Clarinet and Horn Concertos / Maag

More of the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

  • This wonderful classical release returns to the site for only the second time in twenty months, here with two killer Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sides – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • Big, clear, present and transparent, with a huge bottom end, you better believe that this is some Demo Disc sound
  • Both sides are open, high-rez, and spacious, with depth like you will not believe and some of the least shrill string reproduction we have ever heard for this music (which is the main problem we ran into on the album)
  • These wonderful concertos — some of the greatest ever composed — should be part of any serious classical collection.
  • Others that belong in that category can be found here.
  • Kenneth Wilkinson was (probably) the engineer for these sessions in glorious Kingsway Hall. It’s yet another remarkable disc from the golden age of vacuum tube recording.

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