paris-conservatoire

Rossini Overtures – Reissues Versus Originals

Hot Stamper Pressings on Decca & London Available Now

The London and Decca original pressings of Decca’s recordings are the best sounding, right?

Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t.

We were a bit surprised that some of the (expensive) originals didn’t sound very good to us in recent shootouts.

Bad vinyl, bad mastering, who knows why so many early copies suffer from thick, dull and veiled sound? 

The Stereo Treasury pressing of Maag’s 1958 recording you see here is shockingly good in many ways. It sure doesn’t sound like a budget reissue.

If anything it sounds more original than the originals we played against it!

It’s yet another remarkable disc from the Golden Age of Vacuum Tube Recording Technology, with the benefit of mastering by means of the modern cutting equipment of the mid- to late- ’60s. (We are of course here referring to the good modern mastering of many years ago, not the bad modern mastering of today.)

The combination of old and new works wonders on this title, as you will surely hear for yourself on both of these Super Hot or better sides.

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Berlioz – Symphonie Fantastique / Argenta

More Imported Pressings on Decca and London

  • With two INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sides, this copy of this orchestral spectacular (the first to hit the site in over two and a half years) is certainly as good as we have ever heard
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this amazing copy in our notes: “big and spacious with textured strings”…”fully extended from top to bottom”…”tubey bass and brass”…”huge and open”…”rich and transparent”
  • We love the performance of The Paris Conservatoire Orchestra under Argenta, and this original London pressing shows you just how well recorded that performance was back in 1958
  • The sound is clear and open and wonderfully smooth and the bottom is big — the tympani and lower strings are powerful and dynamic
  • You will have a hard time finding better sound in the lower registers for this work — most of the pressings we’ve played were simply too anemic to take seriously
  • Marks and problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these early pressings, but once you hear just how stunning 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
  • It’s worth noting that this is the only copy from our shootout that will make it to the site this time ’round – all of the others had far worse issues that rendered them unacceptable for listing, so those of you hoping for a Nearly White Hot or Super Hot copy with audiophile surfaces and no marks that play are going to be almost as disappointed as we were

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Stravinsky / The Rite of Spring – The Ultimate Recording of the Work

More of the music of Igor Stravinsky

  • An outstanding Shaded Dog pressing with superb sound from start to finish
  • Perhaps the greatest performance ever, certainly our favorite for performance and sound – this is not an easy piece of music to record judging by how many awful sounding versions exist — we should know, we played them
  • Monteux knows the work as well as anyone — he himself conducted the premier in 1913!
  • Mind boggling in its power to move the listener – a classic Decca Tree recording from 1956 by the master, Mr. Kenneth Wilkinson
  • There are about 150 orchestral recordings we’ve awarded the honor of having the best performances with top quality sound, and this recording certainly deserve a place on that list, close to the top I would think

It takes us three years — and a lot of hard work and a fair amount of luck — to get a shootout like this going.

The tympani and bass drum on this recording have few equals in our experience. This is the way HUGE and POWERFUL drums sound in concert. Those of you who go to classical concerts regularly will recognize that sound immediately. You probably also know that finding Golden Age recordings with this kind of deep bass is unusual to say the least.

The space and dynamic power of these sides are really something to hear on this groundbreaking work. Lush when quiet, clear and undistorted when loud, not many copies of Rite of Spring can do what these two sides can.

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Bizet / Saint-Saens / Gounod, et al. – Ballet Highlights From French Opera

More of the Music of Georges Bizet

    • With top grades on both sides, this original Mercury stereo pressing of these renowned ballet works features some of the BEST sound we’ve heard from Paray
    • Listen to the lush strings and the weighty, rich sound on the Massenet piece on side two – that is the sound of a shootout winning pressing
    • The Ballet Music from Faust may just give the impossibly rare RCA (LSC 2449) a run for its money in terms of sound and performance
    • Vibrant orchestrations, top quality sound and scratch-free surfaces combine for an astounding listening experience
    • This spectacular Demo Disc recording is big, clear, rich, dynamic, transparent and energetic – HERE is the sound we love
    • If you’re a fan of delightful orchestral showpieces such as these ballet highlights, this LP from 1961 belongs in your collection
    • The complete list of titles from 1961 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

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Rossini / Overtures / Maag – The Best on Record

More of the Music of Gioachino Rossini

  • With superb sound from start to finish, the orchestral power on display here is positively breathtaking
  • Wilkie’s Decca Tree recording is overflowing with the kind of rich, spacious, Tubey Magical sound that can only be found on vintage vinyl
  • Performances and sound like no other – Maag’s Rossini Overtures is in a league of its own
  • “You’d think Maag would approach the scores the way most conductors do: gung-ho and hell bent for leather. He doesn’t. In fact, Maag displays a good deal of reserve, calculating his interpretations for the biggest payoff. For instance, in William Tell he keeps the opening sections in check, and then he builds the final segment into a most-exciting whirlwind, the conclusion carrying you away.”
  •  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

Maag breathes life into these works as only he can and the Decca engineering team led by Kenneth Wilkinson do him proud.

Everyone needs a good Rossini Overtures – the music is exciting and fun, not to mention Demonstration Quality on a pressing such as this. The combination of sound and performance on the best of the Maag-led Londons could not be equaled.

Gamba on London was much too sleepy for our tastes, and the famous Reiner on RCA left a lot to be desired. It’s mid-hall perspective and dynamic compression took all the fun out of this music.

After hearing the killer Maag pressings, nothing else would do!

Note that the orchestra is none other than the Paris Conservatoire, whose playing of the famously demanding Stravinsky Rite of Spring, under Monteux (LSC 2085), is absolutely stunning as well. (more…)

Neither the Sound Nor the Performance Here Make the Grade

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Rimsky-Korsakov Available Now

In our experience this is not the recording of the work to buy, on either Decca or London. Of the two recordings by Ansermet, we much prefer the one made with the Suisse Romande in 1961 to that of the one he recorded with the Paris Conservatoire in 1954 (which was his second recording of the work with them).

We did a monster shootout for this music in 2014, one we had been planning for more than two years. On hand were quite a few copies of the Reiner on RCA; the Ansermet on London (CS 6212, his second stereo recording, from 1961, not the earlier and noticeably poorer sounding recording from in 1959); the Ormandy on Columbia, and a few others we felt had shown potential.

The only recordings that held up all the way through — the fourth movement being THE Ball Breaker of all time, for both the engineers and musicians — were those by Reiner and Ansermet.

This was disappointing considering how much time and money we spent finding, cleaning and playing those ten or so other pressings.

Here it is a year later and we’re capitalizing on what we learned from the first big go around, which is simply this: the Ansermet recording on Decca/London can not only hold its own with the Reiner on RCA, but beat it in virtually any area. The presentation and the sound itself are both more relaxed and natural, even when compared to the best RCA pressings.

The emotional content of the first three movements (all of side one) under Ansermet’s direction are clearly superior. The roller coaster excitement Reiner and the CSO bring to the fourth movement cannot be faulted, or equaled. In every other way Ansermet’s performance is the one for me.

There are other Deccas and Londons that we’ve cleaned and played recently that were disappointing, and they can be found here.

Our Pledge of Service to You, the Discriminating Audiophile 

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Debussy / Prelude & Ravel / Rapsodie Espagnole / Monteux

The Music of Claude Debussy Available Now

  • With two Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sides, this original stereo copy of CS 6248 (similar to the Decca above) is hard to beat
  • This copy is HUGE, rich, clear, dynamic, with exceptionally three-dimensional hall space (the snare is WAY back there)
  • Superb 1961 All Tube recordings of groundbreaking masterpieces by Debussy and Ravel
  • The exceptionally natural recording Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun lets you appreciate the wonder of the piece

Transparent and spacious, wide and naturally staged, clean yet rich, with zero coloration, there is nothing here to fault. Nearly Triple Plus all the way. So relaxed and natural you will soon find yourself lost in the music. (more…)

The Rite of Spring – Our Four Plus Shootout Winner from 2013

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Stravinsky Available Now

The ULTIMATE Rite of Spring has arrived. This early pressing takes the sound of the recording to a place we never thought it could go. With Four Pluses (A++++) it’s more than a full grade better than any copy to ever make it to the site. After hearing this copy we had to lower the grade on our supposedly White Hot (but too noisy to sell) reference LP. 

The space and dynamic power of the sound of this side one were something we had never heard before on Stravinsky’s groundbreaking work. Lush when quiet, clear and undistorted when loud, not one Rite of Spring in a hundred can do what this record can!

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