bartoconce

Every Last One of These Bartok Records with Ansermet Was No Good

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bela Bartok Available Now

Every last one of our London pressings of Concerto for Orchestra was a disaster: smeary strings, blary brass and painfully shrill throughout, with no top or bottom to speak of, the very definition of boxy sound.

The entire group of CS 6086 we had on hand — whether on Blueback or Whiteback, we had a good selection of both — were much too unpleasant to be played on high quality modern equipment.

Why had I been buying them for years?

I made the mistake of assuming that the phenomenally talented Decca engineering and producing team who worked on this project could be relied upon to produce a top quality recording of the Concerto for Orchestra.

As it turns out, my guess turned out to be wrong.

I had made the mistake of believing in the infallability of experts.

I talk about the team of producers and engineers seen below in listing after listing, raving about the amazing sound of the recordings produced by them in the 50s and 60s, many of which are right at the top of the best sounding recordings I have ever had the privilege to play.

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Bartok / Concerto for Orchestra / Solti

More of the Music of Bela Bartok

  • Huge hall, massive weight and powerful energy, this is Demo Disc quality sound by any standard
  • The sound here is glorious, full of all of the qualities that make listening to classical music in analog so involving
  • There are many great recordings of the work, and we had plenty to choose from, but for sonics and performance combined, Solti’s Decca recording from the mid-60s could not be beat
  • “Solti’s Concerto for Orchestra with the LSO was one of the finest of its day and remains so. Highly recommended.”
  • If you’re a fan of Bartok’s orchestral masterpiece, this London from 1965 belongs in your collection.
  • Watch out for Solti’s later recordings for Decca – they usually have an obvious shortcoming which we cannot abide in the classical records we play

Solti breathes life into these works as only he can and the Decca engineering team led by Kenneth Wilkinson do him proud.

“Solti was regarded as, above all, a superb Wagnerian. His performances and countless recordings of other nineteenth century German and Austrian music were also well-regarded, as were his Verdi and his frequent forays into such twentieth century repertory as Bartók, Shostakovich, and Stravinsky.”

There are about 150 orchestral recordings we’ve awarded the honor of offering the best performances with the highest quality sound, and this record certainly deserve a place on that list.

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Robert Brook Can Help You Set Your Anti-Skate

Robert Brook writes a blog which he calls

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

Robert recently recounted a story that aligned very much with my own experience.

Way back in the dark ages of the 90s, I was afraid to mess with my turntable, arm and cartridge for fear of getting them “out of alignment.”

Of course, I had simply assumed at the time that they were in alignment. I had followed all the instructions to the best of my ability, but it would be many years later until I would learn just how crude an approximation that way of doing it turned out to be.

Robert writes:

For years, even decades, I was afraid to touch any of the settings on my turntable, only to discover that when I finally did, I wished I’d done it a lot sooner. Turntable setup has taught me a lot, and as I’ve gotten better at it and better informed about it, I now need to go back and revise the turntable setup guides I posted a few years ago, which are in need of revision and updating.

Here is the complete story. I hope to write more about anti-skate in depth down the road, but for now, check out Robert’s story and then return to this listing and scroll down to read what we’ve written about the subject to date.

System Sounding BRIGHT? 🕶 Might Be Time to ADJUST YOUR ANTI-SKATE

Dialing in the Anti-Skate with Massed Strings

Here we discuss one of our favorite test records. Strings are one of the hardest elements in any recording — including pop and jazz records — to get right. They also make it very easy to spot when something, somewhere, is off.

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