prokoscyth

Another Amazing Mercury Dropped from the TAS Super Disc List?

Hot Stamper Pressings of TAS List Records Available Now

We have a preference for Dorati’s work with the London Symphony Orchestra over those he recorded elesewhere. A record like this will show you exactly why.

The Love of Three Oranges (SR 90006) is a killer recording — the kind of orchestral spectacular that is guaranteed to put your stereo through its paces and then some.

If you’re a fan of 20th century orchestral showpieces such as these, Robert Fine and Wilma Cozart have here produced a very special record containing two of the best.

We hope you like your sound big and bold, because that is the sound they were obviously going for, based on the sound we were hearing from the best early pressings.

I have to admit I was not a fan of this album until recently when I finally got my hands on a clean copy with the right stampers and heard the powerful sound of the London Symphony come blasting out of my speakers – what a thrill!

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Prokofiev / Scythian Suite and Lt. Kije – Abbado

More of the Music of Sergei Prokofiev

  • Boasting excellent Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER from first note to last, this pressing is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other recording of these orchestral spectaculars you’ve heard
  • Scythian Suite takes up all of this Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) side one and is practically as good as we have ever heard, right up there with our Shootout Winner
  • This wonderful LP boasts our favorite performances for both of these popular 20th century works
  • Big, clear, present and transparent, with a huge bottom end, you better believe that this is some Demo Disc sound
  • When the brass is the way it is here – rich and clear, not thin and shrill – you have yourself a top quality DG pressing

With huge amounts of hall space, weight and energy, this is Demo Disc quality sound by any standard. Once the needle has dropped you will quickly forget about the sound and simply find yourself in the presence of some of the greatest musicians of their generation captured on some of the greatest analog recordings of all time.

The bass drum (drums?) here must be heard to be believed. We know of no Golden Age recording with as believable a presentation of the instrument as this. The drum is clearly and precisely located at the back of the stage. Even better, it’s as huge and powerful and room-filling as it would have been had you attended the session yourself. That’s our idea of hi-fidelity here at Better Records! Since this is my favorite performance of all time, I can’t recommend the record any more highly.

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Prokofiev / Love for Three Oranges Suite & Scythian Suite – Dorati

More of the Music of Sergei Prokofiev

  • You’ll find INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout this original Maroon Label Mercury LP
  • We have a preference for Dorati’s work with the London Symphony Orchestra, and a record like this will show you exactly why we do
  • If you’re a fan of 20th century orchestral showpieces such as these, Robert Fine and Wilma Cozart have here produced a very special record of two of the best
  • We hope you like your sound big and bold, because that is the sound they were obviously going for
  • I have to admit I was never a fan of this album until only a few years ago, when I finally got my hands on a clean copy and heard the powerful sound of the London Symphony come blasting out of my speakers – what a thrill!
  • This record seems to have been dropped from the TAS Super Disc list, which is only fitting since the current crop of nitwits has been watering it down with one crappy title after another since HP passed in 2014
  • If you’re a fan of Prokofiev’s music, this superb All Tube Recording from 1957 belongs in your collection.
  • The complete list of titles from 1957 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

In the heyday of the 90s, when these records were all the rage, this copy would have sold for as much as $1000 and maybe even more. And the copy that sold for that would have been very unlikely to sound as good as this one, if only for the fact that cleaning technologies have advanced so much over the last twenty years or so (and no, I do not mean ultrasonic cleaning. I mean scrubbing with the right fluids and using the right machines to vacuum them off).

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Prokofiev / Scythian Suite / Ansermet

More of the Music of Sergei Prokofiev

  • Both sides of this original London pressing of CS 6538 had the big, lively and rich sound we’d been waiting for, earning KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus grades or close them
  • It’s also remarkably quiet — at the high end of Mint Minus Minus — a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • Everything that we listen for in a great classical recording can be heard on this copy – it’s immediate, dynamic, very low distortion, spacious, and alive
  • The bass deserves special mention here – you rarely hear recordings from the 50s and early 60s, the kind of LPs that were mastered with tubes, of course, having this kind of truly deep, punchy bass

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When It Comes to Prokofiev, Classic Records Got One Thing Right

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:

  1. Hard,
  2. Sour,
  3. Colored,
  4. Crude or 
  5. 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.

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Love for Three Oranges Suite on Classic Records Heavy Vinyl

More of the music of Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Sergei Prokofiev

The standard Classic Records failings are as obvious and as irritating on this remaster as they are on practically all of the others.

A lack of ambience. Smeary and hard strings. A lack of Tubey Magic. Overall veiled and recessed presentation.

The Bottom line: This is not a good sounding record.

It should go without saying that the real Mercury pressing is none of these things.

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 Ravel and Prokofiev titles are actually even worse than the Stravinsky we reviewed here on the blog.

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Love for Three Oranges Suite – Our Review from Years Back

More of the music of Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

Huge hall space, wonderfully textured strings – it’s easy to forget just how REAL a recording like this from 1957 can sound.

With almost none of the Mercury nasality on the strings or the brass, we were knocked out by the sound and, of course, the legendary performance.

My notes for side one, complete with exclamation marks, read:

  • Big hall!
  • Transparent!
  • Zero smear!
  • Dynamic!
  • Huge Bass!
  • Realistic!

If that sounds like the kind of record you would like to play for yourself, here it is.

The Scythian Suite was also very good but it seems to get a bit congested (tape overload? compressor overload?) on the loudest parts. It does sound amazing in the quieter passages. It’s not distorted, just brash. It’s very dynamic of course, as is side one. That’s Mercury’s sound.

This was obviously a record the previous owner did not care for. We acquired a copy of LSC 2449 in the same batch, but unfortunately that was a record the owner must have loved — it’s just plain worn out. (We kept it as a reference copy for a future shootout which, considering how rare the record is, may never come to pass.)

In the heyday of the ’90s, when these records were all the rage, this copy would have sold for at least $1000 and probably more. And the copy that sold for that would have been very unlikely to sound as good as this one, if only for the fact that cleaning technologies have advanced so much over the last ten years or so.

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Prokofiev / Scythian Suite – Reviewed Way Back in 2006

More of the music of Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

This is a London Whiteback LP with SUPERB SOUND on both sides. It’s immediate, dynamic, very low distortion, spacious, and relatively sweet.

The bass deserves special mention here. You rarely hear recordings from the ’50s and early ’60s, the kind of LPs that were mastered with tubes of course, having this kind of truly deep punchy bass.

As this album was recorded in ’67 and mastered relatively soon thereafter, the cutting equipment capable of inscribing deep bass onto a slab of vinyl was widely available. For this piece of music it’s almost mandatory to get good solid low end. 

Side two is even sweeter than side one. The strings are tonally Right On The Money (ROTM). The lower strings are especially rich and textured. 

This is an older classical/orchestral review

Most of the older reviews you see are for records that did not go through the shootout process, the revolutionary approach to finding better sounding pressings we started developing in the early 2000s and have since turned into a veritable science.

We found the records you see in these older listings by cleaning and playing a pressing or two of the album, which we then described and priced based on how good the sound and surfaces were. (For out Hot Stamper listings, the sonic grades and vinyl playgrades are listed separately.)

We were often wrong back in those days, something we have no reason to hide. Audio equipment and record cleaning technologies have come a long way since those darker days, a subject we discuss here.

Currently, 99% (or more!) of the records we sell are cleaned, then auditioned under rigorously controlled conditions, up against a number of other pressings. We award them sonic grades, and then condition check them for surface noise.

As you may imagine, this approach requires a great deal of time, effort and skill, which is why we currently have a highly trained staff of about ten. No individual or business without the aid of such a committed group could possibly dig as deep into the sound of records as we have, and it is unlikely that anyone besides us could ever come along to do the kind of work we do.

The term “Hot Stampers” gets thrown around a lot these days, but to us it means only one thing: a record that has been through the shootout process and found to be of exceptionally high quality.

The result of our labor is the hundreds of titles seen here, every one of which is unique and guaranteed to be the best sounding copy of the album you have ever heard or you get your money back.

Further Reading

If you’re searching for the perfect sound, you came to the right place.