3s/ 1s. While solo piano and RCA vinyl are not a match made in heaven, this LP nevertheless has many fine qualities and is worth owning.
Extremely rare and enjoyable. Not the best Living Stereo sound, probably would earn a grade of B or so.
Hot Stamper sound of both sides of this fairly quiet London Blueback pressing.
It has been our experience that good sounding Brahms Symphonies are exceedingly difficult to find on vinyl. This may in fact be the first one to make it to the site. This copy has many nice sonic qualities which we discuss in more detail below. It’s Old School but enjoyable. Krips’ performance with the Vienna Phil is excellent. (more…)
6S/ 5S. RCA Soria pressing in like new condition, which means it plays about M–, maybe a little better.
This is the best sounding copy of this album I have ever heard.
Far from the best RCA Living Stereo has to offer, this copy is not nearly as dreadful as I remember the last one sounded.
The quieter passages are especially lovely.
The climaxes are strained as usual but I’ve never heard a copy of this record that didn’t have that problem.
A classic case of compression causing sonic tradeoffs.
The record comes with a gorgeous heavyweight slipcase and the 12-page libretto complete with custom artwork.
This is an Older Classical/Orchestral Review
Most of these older reviews are for records that did not go through the shootout process, the revolutionary approach to finding the best sounding pressings we started developing in the early 2000s. We found the records you see in these listings by cleaning and playing a pressing or two of the album, which we then described in the listing and priced according to how good the sound and surfaces seemed to us at the time.
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 then.
Nowadays, 99% (or more!) of the records we sell are cleaned, then auditioned under rigorously controlled conditions along with a number of other pressings, awarded sonic grades, then carefully condition checked 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 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, would ever be able to do the kind of work we do.
Every record we offer is unique, and 100% guaranteed to satisfy or your money back.
This Super Rare, Highly Collectible copy of LSC 2400 has vintage RCA Golden Age sound, for better and for worse. Even though the album was recorded by Decca, it’s got a healthy dose of Living Stereo Tubey Magic. There will never be a reissue of this record that even remotely captures the richness of the sound found here.
And the hall is HUGE — so spacious and three-dimensional it’s almost shocking, especially if you’ve been playing the kind of dry, multi-miked modern recordings that the ’70s ushered in for London and RCA.
Side One
Big and lively. The Tubey Magical colorations are a bit much for us, with too much tube smear on the strings and brass to earn more than a single plus. [Note that we almost never put records with a grade this low on the site these days.]
Side Two
Even bigger and more spacious, with some smear caused by the serious amounts of tube compression being used, of course, but the quiet passages are magical. [Which is precisely what heavy tube compression is designed to accomplish.]
The Victrola Reissue
We much prefer the sound of the Victrola reissue, VICS 1206, which came out in 1966.
As for the Victrola pressing, we’re guessing — how could we possibly know for sure? — that less tube compression was used in the mastering.
It’s still plenty tubey, but more to our taste for not being overly tubey.
This is a very old review. We are no longer big fans of the recording, although if you can pick one up cheap, which is very doable as this record should be sitting in the bins for under ten bucks, you might want to give it a try. We recommend you look for the earlier STS label, Silver and Black, not Orange and Black.
SUPERB SOUND! This Orange and Black label British pressing has sweet strings, powerful dynamics, plenty of depth and a wide soundstage.
It’s major faults are a lack of deep bass and some congestion during loud passages.
Sir Ralph Richardson makes a wonderful narrator — the sound of his voice is priceless.
But the real attraction is the First Symphony, commonly known as the Classical Symphony. Sargent plays it with VERVE! He brings energy and excitement to this work. The London Symphony is at the top of their game as well; they play with the precision required to bring the work off with aplomb.
It’s hard to find a good Prokofiev First, and since this is one of my all time favorite pieces of classical music, if you don’t have one, this is a good place to start.
[We prefer the Previn on EMI but this one is very good and easily found in record stores.]
A decent reissue, a record worth buying at the right price but no Demo Disc by any means.
This plum label original Victrola pressing is actually better than most pressings of the rare Shaded Dog that we’ve played, LSC 2363. The violin tone is lovely on side one, but the orchestra is not what it should be.
Side two has Tartini’s Devil’s Trill which takes up about half the side and has the best sound here, earning a grade of A+ to A++.
Szeryng is excellent throughout.
More of the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Mozart
Many years ago we wrote the following review for CS 6107:
An exceptionally QUIET copy for an early Blueback pressing. The sound is old-fashioned Decca, which seems to suit this music quite well. The hall is reverberant, as it would have been in Mozart’s day, and the perspective is mid-hall. The string tone is excellent. Some of the louder passages might be a bit strained, but overall the sound is correct for this music.
Maag and the LSO are of course Mozart experts and the performances here do not disappoint. A rare title and a lovely one.
More recently we got in a nice pressing that sounded OK, nothing special, even after a good cleaning.
Were we wrong years ago? Hard to say. That copy from many years ago is gone.
Three things we always keep in mind when a pressing doesn’t sound like we remember it did, or think it should:
All things considered, the consensus would now be that CS 6107 is very unlikely to be as good a record as we used to think it was.
A classic case of live and learn and also a case of progress in audio, probably. We really can’t be sure.
Further Reading
Hot Stamper Classical and Orchestral Imports on Decca & London
Reviews and Commentaries for Recordings by Decca
This is an IMMACULATE London LP with the old style paste-on back cover. We cracked open the factory seal just to make sure that this was a British pressing.
As we’ve said before, Kertesz is the Dvorak man! He recorded the complete cycle for London; many of those LPs have superb performances and excellent sound.
We dropped the needle momentarily on this title and heard sound that was overly smooth for my taste. If you like your records on the smooth side, this record might be more up your alley than it was ours.
There are a number of other Deccas and Londons that we’ve played over the years that were disappointing, and they can be found here.
Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Recordings Available Now
Reviews and Commentaries for Hundreds of Living Stereo Records
This listing is from 2008. In 2004, we liked 11s/10s quite a bit.
12s Hot stampers. The best sounding copy I’ve ever heard.
Jim Mitchell is famous for pointing out that many of the RCA’s that were re-recorded a few years later are inferior to their earlier counterparts.
This record is no exception.
LSC 1817 is an amazing record.
This record is merely good, with depth, soundstaging, nice string tone, etc., but not the kind of sonic fireworks to be found on the 1954 2-track recording that RCA first did of the work.
A very good Sabre Dance as a bonus, check it out. It’s the lead off track on Destination Stereo (LSC 2307) for good reason: it sounds great. (more…)
More of the music of Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908)
Our Favorite Performance of Scheherazade – Ansermet with the Suisse Romande
One of the most dynamic Scheherazade”s on record. The brass really blasts through in this recording.
Of course the question is how does this recording stack up to the famous Reiner. Well, I’ll tell you.
The Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra is not in the same league with the CSO, that’s well known. Dorati may be every bit as talented as Reiner, but he doesn’t have the players at his disposal capable of pulling off demanding material such as this.
But the orchestra acquits itself well here. The first violinist is quite good. That’s not the problem.
What lets the side down is the Mercury recording team, who fail to adequately present the weight of the orchestra in the lower midrange and below. One thing I noticed recently when playing an original LSC 2446 was how rich and powerful the sound was in the lower strings and in the brass relative to later pressings of the same title and other recordings of the work.
That opening movement of Scheherazade needs power down there and the Mercury simply doesn’t have enough of that power to qualify it as one of the top sounding Mercs. (more…)