griegpeerg

Grieg / Music From Peer Gynt – A Cisco Disaster

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Edvard Grieg

Classical and Orchestral Recordings Available Now

An audiophile hall of shame pressing from Cisco / Impex /  Boxstar / Whatever.

Pretty bad, on a par with the transistory, shrill crap Classic Records has been dishing out for years, but in the opposite tonal direction: dull and dead as a doornail.

I often mention on this blog that Cisco’s releases (as well as DCC’s) had to fight their way through Kevin Gray’s transistory, opaque, airless, low-resolution cutting system. We discuss that subject on the blog in more depth here.

Our favorite recording of Peer Gynt is the one by Otto Gruner-hegge and the Oslo Philharmonic from 1959.

The Fjeldstad with the LSO is our second favorite and much easier to find. We hope to do a shootout for it in 2024.

Further Reading

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Grieg / Peer Gynt – Speakers Corner Reviewed, with Handy VTA Advice

More of the music of Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)

Reviews and Commentaries for Peer Gynt

Sonic Grade: C+

The Fjeldstad has long been one of our favorite performances of Peer Gynt here at Better Records. 

This record is handy for VTA set-up as well, a subject discussed below in our listing from 2010.

The sound is excellent for a modern reissue*, but in the loudest sections the orchestra can get to be a bit much, taking on a somewhat harsh quality. (The quieter passages are superb: sweet and spacious.)

So I adjusted the VTA a bit to see what would happen, and was surprised to find that even the slightest change in VTA caused the strings to lose practically all their rosiny texture and become unbearably smeared.

This is precisely why it’s a good heavy vinyl pressing for setting up your turntable.

If you can get the strings to play with reasonably good texture on this record you probably have your VTA set correctly.

VTA

Correct VTA adjustment for classical records (as well as all other kinds of records) is critical to their proper reproduction. If you do not have an arm that allows you to easily adjust its VTA, then you will just have to do it the hard way (which normally means loosening a set screw and moving the arm up and down until you get lucky with the right height).

Yes, it may be time consuming, it may in fact be a major pain in the ass, but there is no question in my mind that you will hear a dramatic improvement in the sound or your records once you have taken the time to correctly set the VTA, by ear, for each and every record you play.

We heard the improvement on this very record, and do on all the classical LPs (and all other kinds of records) we play.

The Big Caveat

As for the asterisk (*) in the first line above, it concerns the caveat “…for a modern reissue…” What exactly do we mean by that? Allow us to reprint what we wrote about another Heavy Vinyl classical pressing, one that we used to like.

We cracked open the Speakers Corner pressing of Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tale of Tsar Saltan in order to see how it would fare against a pair of wonderful sounding Londons we were in the process of shooting out a while ago. Here’s what we heard in our head to head comparison.

The soundstage, never much of a concern to us at here at Better Records but nevertheless instructive in this case, shrinks roughly 25% with the new pressing; depth and ambience are reduced about the same amount. Similar and even more problematical losses can be heard in the area of top end extension.

But what really bothered me was this: The sound was just so VAGUE.

There was a cloud of musical instruments, some here, some there, but they were very hard to SEE. On the Londons we played they were clear. You could point to each and every one. On this pressing it was impossible.

Case in point: the snare drum, which on this recording is located toward the back of the stage, roughly halfway between dead center and the far left of the hall. As soon as I heard it on the reissue I recognized how blurry and smeary it was relative to the clarity and immediacy it had on the earlier London pressings. I’m not sure how else to describe it – diffuse, washed out, veiled. It’s just vague.

This particular Heavy Vinyl reissue is more or less tonally correct, which is not something you can say about many reissues these days. In that respect it’s tolerable and even enjoyable. I guess for thirty bucks that’s about the most you can hope for.

But… when I hear this kind of sound only one word comes to mind, a terrible word, a word that makes us recoil in shock and horror. That word is DUB. This reissue is made from copy tapes.

Copies in analog or copies in digital, who is to say, but it sure ain’t the master tape we’re hearing, of that we can be fairly certain. How else to explain such mediocre sound?

Yes, the cutting systems being used to master these vintage recordings aren’t very good; that seems safe to say. Are the tapes too old and worn? Is the vinyl of today simply not capable of storing the kind of magical sound we find so often in pressings from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s?

To all these questions and more we have but one answer: we don’t know. We know we don’t like the sound of very many of these modern reissues and I guess that’s probably all that we need to know about them. 

If someone ever figures out how to make a good sounding modern reissue, we’ll ask them how they did it. 

Until then it seems the question is moot.

Back in 2011 we stopped carrying Heavy Vinyl and other Audiophile LPs of all kinds. So many of them don’t even sound this good, and this is the kind of sound that just bores us to tears.

This record is disappointing in a number of ways that we believe are important to the proper presentation of orchestral music.

If you own a copy, listen for the things we’ve identified in the sound that came up short.

Here are some of the other records that we’ve found are good for testing the specific qualities that the Speakers Corner pressing lacks.

Grieg / Peer Gynt Suites – Were We Wrong? Probably

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Edvard Grieg

Reviews and Commentaries for Peer Gynt

Below are the notes for a later pressing we played many years ago. I doubt if we would like this pressing much now.

It sounds like it lacks Tubey Magic, as well as weight in the lower registers, and we are much less tolerant of those kinds of shortcomings now than we were then.

Our review from 2008

Fiedler is wonderful here, which is to be expected. What’s unusual about this Red Seal is how good the sound is. It’s extremely transparent and tonally correct.

It sounds to me like a flat transfer.

Some tubey colorations would be nice, especially in the louder passages.

The sound also lacks a bit of weight in the bottom end.

But these faults are mostly made up for by the tremendous clarity and freedom from distortion that this pressing has. I doubt if the Shaded Dog has those qualities.

Further Reading

Living Stereo Tubey Magical Sound from 1959 Like This Is Hard to Beat

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Edvard Grieg

Reviews and Commentaries for Peer Gynt

This is a fairly old discussion of the album. Our latest thinking about it can be found here.

As much as I like Fjeldstad’s Peer Gynt on Decca/London with the LSO, I have to say that Odd Gruner-Hegge (love that first name!) and the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra turn in the better of the two performances. To these ears theirs is more lyrical; it flows more naturally both within and between the individual movements.

Joy

The Oslo Phil also gives me more of a sense that they are feeling the joy in the playing of these works; I do not get quite the same feeling from the LSO. As we worked our way through more and more Living Stereo copies, the Oslo Phil.’s enthusiasm and love for the music became recognizably stronger, and, as one would expect, more agreeable and involving.

Our preference for this performance is of course a matter of taste; we cannot be sure you will feel the same. No doubt you have a version of the Fjeldstad on hand for comparison purposes, perhaps the Speakers Corner pressing (which we used to like quite a bit), but any will do. I expect that playing a handful of select movements from the two performances back to back will show this one to be superior.

To be fair, both are superb. A sizable group of other recordings were auditioned, but we found no others that were comparable in terms of both sound and performance.

The Sound

In comparing the sound I would call it a toss-up, perhaps with the tie going to the Fjeldstad. The Decca is bigger and clearer, but has some aspects to the miking that strike me as infelicitous. The brass in places seems to jump out and call attention to itself, which never happens on the RCA.

Although less of a Demo Disc, the sound of the Gruner-Hegge performance was slightly more involving, or is it the performance that draws you in? As usual, separating the sound of the music from the music itself is no easy task, if it is even possible at all.

Side One

Rich, tubey, yet open and clear, with lovely string textures, especially in the lower strings, as would be expected of any Living Stereo recording from 1958. Anitra’s Dance (sounding very much like a movement from Scheherazade) is superb here and would qualify to demo your system with, assuming you have the system a large orchestral recording such as this requires.

As the record plays the top end extends and the space of the hall becomes more clear and 3-D.

Side Two

The opening is exciting and sounds amazing on this copy — it doesn’t get any better than this folks!

The top is extremely open and clean yet the strings are never bright nor shrill. So transparent and spacious.

The last movement has some Wagnerian touches. The string tone of the lower strings is hard to fault, and the overall sound at the end is lively and exciting without ever crossing the line into hi-fi-ishness. This is the mark of an exceptionally good record!

Rarity

It has taken us years of serious searching to come up with the pile of copies we were able to play in our shootout. To find a copy of this record in anything but beat condition has been difficult and time-consuming to say the least. The powerfully dynamic Hall of the Mountain King is at the end of side one and unless you have a very well-cared-for copy the inner groove distortion will be painful indeed.

By the way, none of the better copies in the shootout were quieter than this one. Mint Minus Minus is going to be as quiet as these pressings get. 

Speakers Corner Heavy Vinyl and the Loss of Transparency

Hot Stamper Classical and Orchestral Pressings Available Now

Reviews and Commentaries for Peer Gynt

We review yet another mediocre Speakers Corner Heavy Vinyl reissue.

We recently gave the Heavy Vinyl pressing from Speakers Corner, the same one that we had previously recommended back in the ’90s, a sonic grade of C+.

To our ears now it has many more shortcomings than it did back then, which we discuss below.

So often when we revisit the remastered pressings we used to like on Heavy Vinyl we come away dumbfounded — what on earth were we thinking? These are not the droids sounds we are looking for. Perhaps our minds were clouded at the time.

Below are some thoughts from a recent classical listing that we hope will shed some light on our longstanding aversion to the sound of modern remasterings.

What is lost in these newly remastered recordings? Lots of things, but the most obvious and bothersome is TRANSPARENCY. Modern records are just so damn opaque. We can’s stand that sound. It drives us crazy. Important musical information — the kind we hear on even second-rate regular pressings — is simply nowhere to be found. That audiophiles as a whole — including those that pass themselves off as the champions of analog in the audio press — do not notice these failings does not speak well for either their equipment or their critical listening skills.

It is our contention that no one alive today makes records that sound as good as the ones we sell. Once you hear this Hot Stamper pressing, those 180 gram records you own may never sound right to you again. They sure don’t sound right to us, but we are in the enviable position of being able to play the best properly cleaned older pressings (reissues included) side by side with the new ones, where the faults of the current reissues become much more recognizable, even obvious. When you can hear them that way, head to head, there really is no comparison.

A Lost Cause

The wonderful vintage disc we are offering here will surely shame 100% of the Heavy Vinyl pressings ever made, as no Heavy Vinyl pressing — not one — has ever sounded especially transparent or spacious to us when played against the best Golden Age recordings, whether pressed back in the day or twenty years later.

Many of the major labels were producing superb classical records well into the ’70s. By the ’90s no one, and we really do mean no one, could manage to make a record that compares with them.

Precisely the reason we stopped carrying The Modern LP Pressing — it just can’t compete with good vintage vinyl, assuming that the vinyl in question has been properly mastered, pressed and cleaned.

This is of course something we would never assume — we clean the records and play them and that’s how we find out whether they are any good or not. There is no other way to do it — for any record from any era — despite what you may have read elsewhere.

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Grieg – Peer Gynt / Gruner-hegge / Oslo Philharmonic

More of the music of Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)

More Orchestral Spectaculars

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  • You’ll find two outstanding Double Plus (A++) sides on this vintage pressing, offering Orchestral sound that is gloriously Big and Bold like no other recording of this music you have ever heard (or your money back)
  • Rich and tubey, yet open and clear, with lovely string textures, especially in the lower strings, as would be expected of any Living Stereo record from this era
  • The Living Stereo Tubey Magical sound from 1959 is hard to fault here – they don’t make ’em like this anymore!
  • Our favorite performance – Gruner-Hegge and the Oslo Philharmonic understand this music at the most profound levels, making it an absolute Must Own for those of who appreciate the sublime experience of playing classical music in the home

As much as I like Fjeldstad’s Peer Gynt on Decca/London with the LSO, I have to say that Odd Gruner-Hegge (love that first name!) and the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra turn in the better of the two performances. To these ears, theirs is more lyrical; it flows more naturally both within and between the individual movements.

This vintage Living Stereo pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound. (more…)

Duke Ellington – Selections From Peer Gynt Suites Nos. 1 and 2

More Duke Ellington

  • This superb copy of Duke Ellington’s 1961 release boasts Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) from top to bottom – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • The sound is gloriously ANALOG – smooth, relaxed and full-bodied – almost no other copy in our shootout had this kind of exceptionally natural sound
  • Wall to wall, floor to ceiling, room-filling All Tube Radio Recorders Studio sound like nothing you have ever heard
  • One of Ellington’s most enjoyable classic collaborations with Billy Strayhorn
  • “All in all, it’s one of Ellington’s most focussed large-scale efforts… It ends on a swinging Ray Nance solo (on violin, yet!), miles away from the politesse of Grapelli. I’ve heard only one other violinist (and not a jazz violinist, surprisingly) swing this hard.”

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Grieg / Peer Gynt Suite / Barbirolli – Reviewed in 2010

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Edvard Grieg

Reviews and Commentaries for Peer Gynt

This is an original Mercury LP with AMAZING sound and EXTREMELY quiet vinyl! This has got that Mercury LIFE to it!

The sound may be slightly on the dry side, but all the instruments have wonderful texture and tonality.

And of course, this is music that belongs in any collection. It’s some of the greatest and most accessible classical music ever written. (more…)

Grieg / Peer Gynt / Fjeldstad – Our Shootout Winner from Long Ago

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Edvard Grieg

Reviews and Commentaries for Peer Gynt

This commentary is from 2005. It is unlikely that the pressing we liked at the time, a Stereo Treasury LP of the famous Fjeldstad performance, would come anywhere close to winning a shootout these days.

Our Commentary from 2005

This is overall the best sounding pressing of the Fjeldstad / LSO we have ever played, with BETTER than Super Hot Stamper sound on both sides. For those of you who know your Londons, when you see the label on this LP you will no doubt be shocked: This is the last pressing in the world that one would expect to sound good. 

Of course we here at Better Records don’t give a sh*t about any such conventional wisdom / collector bias. We like audiophile quality sound and we don’t give a damn where we find it. Up against the competition this copy was superb in practically every way, excelling with orchestral size, weight and energy like virtually no other.

This is to be expected from a recording of its renown. What was not to be expected was the actual pressing that delivered those sonic qualities

We’ve loved the Blueback pressings in the past; this time not so much (too crude and opaque with jello for bass).

Side One

A++ to A+++, better than Super Hot, very clean and clear with an extended top (the kind you hear on very few Golden Age pressings). It’s slightly dry and could use a bit more weight at the start, but about halfway through it becomes fuller, bigger and richer.

Great energy too, especially in the final movement. A touch more Tubey Magic and this side would have earned the full Three Pluses.

Side Two

A++ to A+++. Transparent, with good top end extension, as well as space and clarity. No smear, so the textures of the strings and brass are excellent as well. The percussion is especially clear.

We had a side that was a bit more Tubey Magical, so we took a half plus off of this copy’s grade.

The last movement has some Wagnerian touches; the sound at the end of this copy is bigger, more clear and more spacious than practically any other we played.

The overall sound in the climax is lively and exciting without ever crossing the line into hi-fi-ishness. This is the mark of an exceptionally good record!