This Super Rare original London pressing has EXCELLENT SOUND and lovely music.
The piano is especially well recorded, with the orchestra exhibiting the patented lovely, rich, rossiny string tone, with tons of depth and spaciousness to the sound.
This is the first copy of the album I have run into, and my first exposure to the Bartok Piano Concerto, which is actually wonderful.
This London Whiteback LP (CS 6509) has a Super Hot Side Two, flowing with Decca / London richness and sweetness. As we’ve said on the site many times, the London pressings with catalog numbers that start with 6400 and 6500 are some of the best recordings we’ve ever played.
Side two gives you that sound. There are two lovely Concert Waltzes that complete the program and they are just wonderful here, with quiet vinyl to boot. (more…)
This is a wonderful sounding performance of Ravel’s Piano Concerto, originally available on Shaded Dog (LSC 2271) and overflowing with Tubey Magical Living Stereo sound from 1958.
The Victrola here is from 1964, and may or may not sound better than the average original RCA pressing. LSC 2271 is not a record we run into every day, so comparisons would be speculative to say the least.
What we can tell you is that our Victrola here is big, spacious, transparent and clear, with dead-on tonality throughout.
The overall sound seems to lack weight at first but with continued listening it appears to be the result of the orchestration being “lighter”, more appropriate to the jazz influences in the music. If you like Gershwin this piece will be right up your alley. (more…)
This is an EXCEPTIONALLY GOOD SOUNDING Shaded Dog pressing with fairly quiet vinyl. What’s surprising about this pressing is how transparent and low distortion it is.
Just as with Destination Stereo (LSC 2307), the excerpts here frequently sound better than they do on the original complete performances. Rubinstein’s piano is solid and clear sounding, which is rarely the case, especially for his Beethoven concertos. Those almost never sound good, but the excerpt here for Concerto No. 3 is excellent.
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.
This lovely RCA Living Stereo Soria Pressing (LDS 2656) has reasonably quiet vinyl and EXCELLENT SOUND on side one. (It’s a little ticky but find me a Soria pressing that isn’t.)
Side one is so transparent you feel as though you are truly in the presence of the musicians. (Try that with any, and I do mean any, heavy vinyl pressing on the planet. Veiled and opaque, none of them can transport you like a properly recorded and mastered vintage LP can.)
The plucked instruments, of which there are many and varied, have their transient information properly reproduced on this side, with zero distortion. There is a small amount of upper-midrange boost — typical for RCA during this period — that holds side one back from our highest grade. It’s subtle but it’s real. (more…)
This RCA Living Stereo LP has AMAZING SOUND. It’s everything a Living Stereo record should be — warm and rich with lots of depth and silky highs.
The lower strings on this record are hands down some of the best I’ve ever heard. They’re wonderfully rich and textured.
Out of all the Decca-recorded RCAs I’ve had the pleasure (or misfortune as the case may be!) of listening to, this is definitely one of the top dogs.
If this record were quiet it would easily fetch $300; unfortunately that ain’t the case. The only reason we’re offering this copy for sale is because the sound — and the music — are OUT OF THIS WORLD!
This is one of the pressings we’ve discovered with reversed polarity.
This IMMACULATE set has dry, edgy, screechy sound — until you reverse your absolute phase! Then it sounds pretty good! It certainly will never win any awards, but it’s practically unlistenable without the phase reversed.
Now I can’t say that’s true for all six sides. I play graded all six sides — they range from M- to slightly worse, about as quiet as these Soria pressings ever are — but I only reversed the phase on side one after dropping the needle on the other sides and suffering through the brittle sound. (more…)
This Super Hot Stamper solo piano record is 1963 Decca recording technology at its finest (or would be if we had ten copies to shoot out and could find the White Hot Stamper pressing hidden among them).
As it is, we are happy to have found this one, Super Hot on both sides, an amazingly realistic representation of a piano. You will have a hard time finding better.
And the music, especially on side two, is compelling and wonderful. This is classical music that will engage you at the deepest and most serious level. Widely considered Liszt’s masterpiece, in Curzon’s forceful hands it is not hard to understand why.
Side One
A++ Super Hot Stamper sound, with a clear piano surrounded in space. Present and dynamic, there is little to fault here, save a touch of smear and a slight lack of weight.
Real pianos in live recitals have weight that I have never heard reproduced by any stereo system, so “real weight” is a relative term, one that applies more to recordings than to the live instrument itself. (more…)
This is an exceptionally good sounding chamber record on the RCA White Dog label, especially on side two, which earned a sonic grade of A++ to A+++. Side two has the Beethoven work for horn and piano, and it sounds about as real and natural as a chamber recording can. Side one is not quite up to the same sonic standards, but is quite good nevertheless, earning a very respectable grade of A+ to A++.
This title is so rare I had literally never seen one in my 25+ years as a dealer in audiophile-oriented recordings. The other bit of good news is that the vinyl is unusually quiet, playing as it does mostly Mint Minus. How many early RCA pressings can make such a claim? No more than five per cent I would think, if that. (more…)
This is the earlier pressing of LSC 2068, which stretches the Rachmaninoff piece over both sides of the record, resulting in a more dynamic pressing.
The sound is tonally right on the money with the superb, rich, sweetly textured strings we have come to expect from RCA in this period.
The piano has exquisite tone as well.
This is a lovely, lyrical piece of music and the natural sound conveys the qualities of the work perfectly.