dvoracello

Dvorak – Cello Concerto / Starker

More Recordings with Janos Starker

Hot Stamper Pressings of Mercury Classical Recordings Available Now

  • Starker and the LSO’s sublime performance debuts on the site with the big, lively and rich sound we had been waiting for
  • The cello is present and immediate, with sound that is wonderfully full and harmonically natural
  • 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
  • As you may well imagine, shootouts for this album are exceedingly rare. For a sought-after TAS List title such as this, we’re lucky to be able to do one every five years or so. Until the next one comes around, please consider trying some of our other classical and orchestral Hot Stamper pressings

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Robert Fine Does It Again

Hot Stamper Pressings of Mercury Classical Recordings Available Now

The notes you see below are for our Shootout Winner, which earned our top grade of at least 3+ on side one with its Hard to Fault (HTF) sound.

If you are interested in a record with the kind of sound described below, please contact us and we will be happy to put you on the waiting list for the next killer copy that comes along and blows our minds.

As you may well imagine, shootouts for this album are exceedingly rare. For a sought-after TAS List title such as this, we’re lucky to be able to do one every five years or so. Until the next one comes around, please consider trying some of our other classical and orchestral Hot Stamper pressings.

Robert Fine’s recordings for Mercury are some of the most amazing sounding we have ever played. To see what might be available, please click here.

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Dvorak / Cello Concerto / Fournier / Szell – Reviewed in 2010

More of the music of Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904)

This Deutsche Grammophon German Import LP is especially warm and sweet, especially for a DG record.

The tape hiss here is exactly right, which tells me that the smooth sound that I’m hearing is what the tape actually recorded and the engineers wanted. The cello sound is wonderful with an especially woody tone and nice texture to the strings.

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.

We found the records you see in these older listings by cleaning and playing a pressing or two of the album, which we then described and priced based on how good the sound and surfaces were. (For out Hot Stamper listings, the Sonic Grades and Vinyl Playgrades are listed separately.)

We were often wrong back in those days, something we have no reason to hide. Audio equipment and record cleaning technologies have come a long way since those darker days, a subject we discuss here.

Currently, 99% (or more!) of the records we sell are cleaned, then auditioned under rigorously controlled conditions, up against a number of other pressings. We award them sonic grades, and then condition check them for surface noise.

As you may imagine, this approach requires a great deal of time, effort and skill, which is why we currently have a highly trained staff of about ten. No individual or business without the aid of such a committed group could possibly dig as deep into the sound of records as we have, and it is unlikely that anyone besides us could ever come along to do the kind of work we do.

The term “Hot Stampers” gets thrown around a lot these days, but to us it means only one thing: a record that has been through the shootout process and found to be of exceptionally high quality.

The result of our labor is the hundreds of titles seen here, every one of which is unique and guaranteed to be the best sounding copy of the album you have ever heard or you get your money back.

Dvorak / Cello Concerto – Hard to Recommend on Living Stereo

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Titles Available Now

I have never heard a copy of this record sound better than decent. This title is very unlikely to have the wonderful sound of the best Living Stereo pressings that you can find on our site, each of which has been carefully evaluated to the highest standards.

If you can get one for cheap, go for it. Otherwise I recommend you pass if what you are looking for is audiophile quality sound.

Perhaps the poor recording quality (I’m guessing; obviously I’ve never heard the master tape) explains the poor sound of the Classic Records remastered version from 1994.

Not that that stopped anybody from buying those awful 180 gram pressings! They may have been mastered by one of the greats, Bernie Grundman, but he was well past his prime when he was working for that awful label, as we explain here.

Have You Noticed?

If you are a fan of Living Stereo pressings, have you noticed that many of them – this one for example – don’t sound all that good?

If you’re an audiophile with good equipment, you should have. But did you? Or did you buy into the hype surrounding these rare LSC pressings and just ignore the problems with the sound?

There is an abundance of hype surrounding the hundreds of Heavy Vinyl pressings currently in print. I read a lot about how wonderful their sound is, but when I actually play them, I rarely find them to be any better than mediocre, and most of them are downright awful.

Music Matters made this garbage remaster. Did anyone notice how awful it sounded? I could list a hundred more that range from bad to worse — and I have! Take your pick: there are more than 150 entries in our Heavy Vinyl Disasters section, each one worse sounding than the next.

It seems as if the audiophile public has completely fallen for these modern Heavy Vinyl pressings.

Audiophiles have made the mistake of approaching these records without the slightest trace of skepticism. How could so many be fooled so badly? Surely some of these people have good enough equipment to allow them to hear how bad these records sound.

Maybe not this guy, or this guy, but there has to be at least some group of audiophiles, however small their number might be, with decent equipment and two working ears out there, right? (Excluding our customers of course, they have to know what is going on to spend the kind of money they spend on our records. And then write us all those letters.)

I would say RCA’s track record during the ’50s and ’60s is a pretty good one, offering (potentially) excellent sound for roughly one out of every three titles or so.

But that means that odds are there would be a lot of dogs in their catalog. This is definitely one of them.

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Dvorak / Cello Concerto – Hard to Recommend on Classic Records

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Dvorak Available Now

Sonic Grade: F

An Audiophile Hall of Shame pressing and another Classic Records LP debunked.

This is a Classic Records pressing (Remember the Sound!) that never sounded very good to me. But the original never impressed either, as you can see from our review of it below.

I have never heard a copy of this record sound better than decent. This title is very unlikely to have the wonderful sound of the best Living Stereo pressings that you can find on our site, each of which has been carefully evaluated to the highest standards.

We love the Starker recordings on Mercury. Wish we could afford to buy some and do a shootout. At the prices they command these days, that is very unlikely to happen.

UPDATE: 2024

Starting in 2024, we were able to do a number of shootouts for Starker’s Mercury recordings.

If we have any titles in stock, they can be found here.

Reviews can commentaries for them can be found here,

We used to recommend the Superanalogue pressing you see pictured when it was in print. I doubt we would care much for it now.

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