More of the music of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
More Classical and Orchestral Recordings
- This early Plum Label Victrola pressing of these lively and masterful performances earned outstanding grades on both sides
- Tons of energy, loads of detail and texture, superb transparency and excellent clarity – all qualities the best vintage vinyl classical pressings have in abundance
- A top performance by Monteux and the LSO, with strings that are tonally correct, rich, and sweet — this is our pick for the best Beethoven 4th
- The horns on the Wagner piece are exceptionally well reproduced here as well – how could a Wagner record be any good without good horns?
- There are about 100 orchestral recordings that offer the discriminating audiophile pressings with the Best Performances and Top Quality Sound. This record has earned a place on that list.
Both sides of this early Plum Label Victrola pressing are superb, with the kind of string tone only found on the best of the Living Stereo releases and other top quality Golden Age recordings.
Here is the kind of sound that Classic Records could not ignore, even though the original was only ever made available as part of RCA’s budget reissue series, Victrola.
Don’t let its budget status fool you — this pressing puts to shame most of what came out on the full price Living Stereo label. (And handily beats any Classic Records reissue ever made.)
And Monteux is once again superb.
We played a large group of Beethoven’s symphonies this week and this was clearly one of the best, if not THE best. Well recorded Beethoven is hard to come by. The box sets we played were mediocre at best, and that left us with only a handful of clean early pressings. These records just aren’t out there like they used to be.