mendemidsu

A Midsummer Night’s Dream on Speakers Corner Heavy Vinyl

More of the music of Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

The Speakers Corner pressing earned something like a “B’ grade from us, which makes it one of the better releases on that label. (I would guess that one or two out of ten would rate a “B.” I also don’t know of any record of theirs that rates a higher grade than “B.”)

It’s overly rich, a case of being too fat in the mid-bass, but otherwise it mostly sounds right.

As you may already know, we stopped carrying Heavy Vinyl pressings of any kind in 2011.

By then, the quality of our playback and record cleaning had improved to the point that even the best Heavy Vinyl LPs were no longer competitive with the vintage vinyl we were then offering as Hot Stamper pressings.

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Mendelssohn / A Midsummer Night’s Dream / Maag

More of the music of Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

More music conducted by Peter Maag

  • A spectacular Demo Disc quality orchestral recording – big, clear, rich, dynamic, transparent and energetic
  • The combination of sound and performance on the best of the Maag-led Londons simply cannot be equaled
  • Maag’s performance here is famous, and widely considered definitive
  • When you hear how good this record sounds, you may have a hard time believing that it’s a budget reissue from the late-’60s, but that’s precisely what it is.
  • Even more extraordinary, the right copies are the ones that win shootouts
  • Here is a list of records that, like this one, contain some of our favorite performances with top quality sound
  • The Decca SPA pressing can also do very well, although it is unlikely to ever win a shootout

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Mendelssohn/ Symphony No. 4 & Music from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” – Colin Davis

Here’s a great Philips LP! Davis really does Mendelssohn right.

A lively performance and this copy sounds MUCH BETTER than others we played.  It had much less of the smear and opacity that characterizes most Philips records. At most one out of ten is any good in our experience. 

This is an Older Classical/Orchestral Review

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Mendelssohn / A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Mono with Maag – Reviewed in 2004

More of the Music of Felix Mendelssohn

London mono original Radio Promotion Copy with DEMO QUALITY SOUND!

Another winner on the early London FFRR Red Label. Maag’s performance here is famous, if not definitive. Audiophiles have known of this record”s qualities for decades. As our stereos get better, so do amazingly natural recordings such as this one.

Speakers corner did a reissue of this record on heavy vinyl which was quite good — too fat in the mid bass but otherwise acceptable. It sure doesn’t sound like this though! This is the real thing! You won’t find too many 180 gram records that sound like this one. (If you can find any.)

Here is the commentary I wrote for the Coppelia mono pressing. The same insights hold true.

This is the kind of record that the mono cartridge owners of the world worship. And for good reason. But you don’t need to have a mono cartridge to hear how good — in fact, how much better — this copy sounds than the stereo pressing.

I found out about mono classical records one day when I got a mono copy of the power of the orchestra, vcs 2659. It sounded better than any stereo recording of that work I had ever heard. All the instruments were so much more solid sounding, so palpable, so free from distortion, that it made me recognize for the first time what the mono record lovers of the world were talking about. That was ten [twenty five by now] years ago. Since then many high end mono cartridges have come on the market, specifically to bring out that sound.

But I don’t have a mono cartridge, and I sure don’t need one to hear how good this record sounds. Everything is right on the money. And of course with Ansermet, ballet conductor extraordinaire, you can be sure the performance is of the highest caliber. A top recommendation from better records.

By the way, there’s a good reason why London makes such good mono records. They ran a separate microphone feed into a monophonic tape recorder for their mono recordings, well into the stereo era in fact. Mercury did also, which is why many Mercury monos have excellent sound. RCA, on the other hand, frequently took the three-track master tape and simply mixed it to mono for their mono releases, which explains why a minority of RCA monos have good sound.

London knew how to do it right and the results speak for themselves.