More of the music of Sergei Prokofiev
The Classic pressing has dreadful sound. Their entire Mercury series was nothing but a disaster. Wilma Cozart was right to wash her hands of the whole enterprise.
No audiophile with good equipment and two working ears should have been fooled by the hype swirling around Classic’s Heavy Vinyl pressings, although plenty of audiophiles were.
Bad equipment? Ears not up to the job? Your guess is as good as mine.
Classic Records is right about the performance, however. See for yourself:
Whether you prefer the fabulous bass dynamics and savage paganism of the Scythian Suite, the colorful and captivating sound-portrait of the fairy tale Love for Three Oranges Suite, Dorati’s super-charged readings of these scores are unsurpassed. Acclaimed by critics and audiophiles alike as among the very best of the best Mercury’s, this dramatic and riveting combination of Prokofiev, Dorati and Mercury Living Presence is a sure winner.
What they are not telling you is that their mastering of the album was dreadful.
If you know the sound of Mercury’s records well, you know that the last thing you would want would be a pressing of SR 90006 that could be described by any of the following five words:
- Hard,
- Sour,
- Colored,
- Crude or
- Airless.
But that is exactly what you get with the Classic Records pressing.
If you own the Classic, we can show you just how awful it is, right in your own home.
Just buy one of our Hot Stamper pressings and you will hear all the things that your Classic is doing wrong. It does take two working ears and good equipment though, so if you have a top quality system, we have a top quality pressing for you to play on it.
It has long been our judgment that Classic Records made very few good records. Why should this one be any different?
These Mercury releases apparently fooled a lot of audiophiles though. Allow me to quote a writer with his own website devoted to explaining and judging classical recordings of all kinds. His initials are A.S. for those of you who have been to his site.
Classic Records Reissues (both 33 and 45 RPM) – These are, by far, the best sounding Mercury pressings. Unfortunately, only six records were ever released by Classic. Three of them (Ravel, Prokofiev and Stravinsky) are among the very finest sounding records ever made by anyone. Every audiophile (with a turntable) should have these “big three.”
Obviously we could not disagree more. I’ve played all six of the Classic Mercurys. The Chabrier, Ravel and Prokofiev titles are actually even worse than the Stravinsky we reviewed here on the blog.