Hot Stamper Classical and Orchestral Pressings Available Now
We played a few copies of the album we had sitting in the backroom and none of them quite worked for us. The sound was somewhat veiled and dry. (The 1s/1s pressing was the worst of the bunch, by the way.)
A decent record, not much more than that, and not really not worth putting in a shootout with the better pressings of the work we have discovered over the years. The best of the bunch might earn a grade of 1.5+, so why even bother?
Yes, we still have no Hot Stamper pressings of the work to offer, but we know they are coming, someday. Our current favorite is a performance by Mravinsky on DG from 1961.
It’s a “good, not great” vintage classical record, best played on an old school stereo system that can hide its shortcomings.
The much more revealing systems of today, like the one we employed to audition this very copy, simply make it too easy to spot its many faults.