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Beethoven / “Kreutzer” & Spring Sonatas / Rubinstein

More of the Music of Beethoven

  • This original Shaded Dog pressing of Rubinstein and Szeryng’s extraordinary performances of Beethoven’s sonatas for violin and piano (LSC 2377) boasts solid Double Plus (A++) Living Stereo sound from first note to last
  • Both of these sides are Tubey Magical, lively and clear, with the kind of three-dimensionality that will fill your listening room from wall to wall that only the best vintage vinyl can offer
  • The immediacy of Szeryng’s violin is simply in a league of its own, with some of the sweetest, richest, most “rosiny” violin tone we’ve had the good fortune to hear
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these early pressings, but once you hear just how superb sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and pops and just be swept away by the music

RCA is famous for its chamber recordings, which tend to be quite rare for some reason. Let’s be honest: we did not conduct this shootout with a dozen copies of the album. It would take us years to find that many clean pressings.

However, that said, we’ve played dozens and dozens of good violin recordings, and we have no problem recognizing good violin sound when we hear it. Don’t be fooled by the lack of Hot Stamper classical listings on the site. The vast majority of killer classical records never make it to the site; they go directly to our best customers, customers who want classical recordings that actually sound good. Not just the kind of Golden Age Recordings that are supposed to.

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This Is How Wrong We Were about Shaded Dogs and Red Seals

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin Available Now

UPDATE 2024

This old (2010) and embarrassing commentary shows just how wrong we were about the sound of various pressings of this Living Stereo title, LSC 2377.

We much prefer the Shaded Dog pressings these days, as can be seen from our most recent listing.

To see our available Hot Stamper pressings of the work, please click here. For more reviews and commentaries, please click here.

Back in 2010 we liked reissue pressings of Living Stereo recordings a lot more than we do now. Only the advent of top quality cleaning equipment and much improved playback made it possible for us to reproduce the early Shaded Dogs in all their glory.

When my system was darker and less revealing, a lot of records that were mastered to be cleaner and brighter sounded great to me. Records like RCA Red Seal pressings, some OJC jazz titles, and lots of other bad records that I used to like were a good complement to my system back in those days.

Now, not so much. When we encourage our readers to get good sound so they can recognize and acquire good records, it’s because we learned that lesson again and again the hard way, by getting lots of great recordings wrong.

Here is our mistaken commentary from 2010:

The Shaded Dog original RCA pressings are the best, right?

Not in our experience. We think that’s just another record myth.

Turns out we were wrong about that. The early pressings win all our shootouts these days. In the case of LSC 2377, the conventional wisdom which holds that the original pressings will most likely have better sound than the vintage reissues turns out to be right.

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