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Breathy, Sweet and Lush – What’s Not to Like?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Tchaikovsky Available Now

Our notes for LSC 2565 read:

Love the sound of this LP, especially the flutes and strings. Breathy, sweet and lush.

It’s very difficult to get the sound right, though. Most copies are smeary, veiled or lacking weight and the loud brass gets pinched. Best copy was a big step up!

We described the Top Copy from our 2023 shootout this way:

Wonderful Living Stereo sound throughout this original Shaded Dog pressing.

Our White Hot Shootout Winner was simply amazing sounding — some of the best orchestral sound we have heard lately, especially audible in exceptionally breathy flutes and sweet strings.

It was a quite a step up in sound quality over even the closest contender, which just goes to show how hard it is to come across these very special pressings no matter how many Shaded Dogs you play.

Our favorite performance of the Tchaikovsky — when you hear it played by the BSO, guided by the baton of the supremely talented Charles Munch, you know you are hearing the work performed with the greatest skill and interpreted as authentically as is humanly possible.

Spacious, rich and smooth – only vintage analog seems capable of reproducing all three of these qualities without sacrificing resolution, staging, imaging or presence.

Another amazing recording from the 60s, brought to you by your vinyl-loving friends at Better Records.

  • The three-dimensional space and Tubey Magic are jaw-dropping on this copy.
  • An amazing Living Stereo all analog recording from 1962 – nothing else sounds like it.
  • When you’ve played as many Living Stereo titles as we have (250+ and counting), you’re bound to run into this kind of Demo Disc sound from time to time – it’s what makes record collecting fun.
  • It’s the kind of record we live for here at Better Records.

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Does Your Pressing of Death and Transfiguration Have These Shortcomings?

More of the Music of Richard Strauss

Many of the later pressings of CS 6211 were not competitive with the earlier pressings, something we had no idea was true until we actually did the shootout.

This is why we do our shootouts with every kind of pressing we can find that has any hope of sounding good to us.

(This is of course something that cannot be predicted with much certainty. What we are saying is simply that we do not expect the German, Dutch, Japanese and such like pressings from other countries outside the UK to do well because they have almost never done well in the past, not for Decca recordings anyway.)

The notes on the left in the box are for the copies that did not do as well as our best copies.

If your copy of the album has any of the shortcomings we mention, and you would like a better pressing to play, rest assured we will have something for you down the road, as this is our favorite for both performance and sound.

Stamper Information

The stampers of the pressings that consistently came in last in our shootout had the mastering marking of L, which signifies the work of George Bettyes. He has done good work in the past, but odds are that any pressing of this title mastered by L is going to be inferior to those that are not.

Our advice: stick with E and G.

As is sometimes the case, there is one and only one set of stamper numbers that consistently wins our shootouts for CS 6211.  Here are some of the others we’ve discovered through the shootout process.

Our notes for an exceptionally good sounding copy from the last shootout can be seen below.

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Tchaikovsky / Strauss – Romeo & Juliet / Till Eulenspiegel / Munch

More of the music of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

More of the music of Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

  • Wonderful Living Stereo sound throughout this original Shaded Dog pressing, with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them
  • Hard to find them quiet, though – for whatever reason, this title was rarely if ever pressed on quiet vinyl
  • Our favorite performance of the Tchaikovsky — when you hear it played by the BSO, guided by the baton of the supremely talented Charles Munch, you know you are hearing the work performed with the greatest skill and interpreted as authentically as is humanly possible
  • Spacious, rich and smooth (particularly on side two) – only vintage analog seems capable of reproducing all three of these qualities without sacrificing resolution, staging, imaging or presence
  • Our White Hot Shootout Winner was simply amazing sounding — some of the best orchestral sound we have heard lately, especially audible in exceptionally breathy flutes and sweet strings
  • It was a quite a step up in sound quality over even the closest contender, which just goes to show how hard it is to come across these very special pressings no matter how many Shaded Dogs you play

A Must Own Record

This is a recording that belongs in any serious Classical Music Collection. Others that belong in that category can be found here.

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Strauss – Death and Transfiguration / Till Eulenspiegel / Karajan

More of the music of Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

  • This original Stereo London pressing of Karajan and the Vienna Phil’s performance of these classical pieces boasts stunning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sound from first note to last – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • Our notes for the two top copies mention how special some stampers are: “these are so tubey with tons of room and space — the massive tympani really shine”
  • These are superb readings of the works, and we know of no others that can compete with the sound of this Decca recording
  • Clear, transparent, rich, big, spacious, tonally correct, with Tubey Magical textured strings, this record is doing practically everything right, and that makes it a very special pressing indeed
  • Some old record collectors (like me) say classical recording quality ain’t what it used to be – here’s all the proof anyone with two working ears and top quality audiophile equipment needs to make the case

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Strauss / Death and Transfiguration and Till Eulenspiegel / Reiner

Living Stereo Titles Available Now

200+ Reviews of Living Stereo Records

This Plum Label Victrola has SUPERB better than Super Hot Stamper sound on side two, the side with Death and Transfiguration. It’s Tubey Magical, rich and sweet in the best Living Stereo tradition of recordings made during the Golden Age, in this case 1958. We had a Shaded Dog pressing of the recording in hand, LSC 2077, and it was better on side one but this Victrola was clearly better on side two.

And Reiner’s performance with the Vienna Phil is outstanding in every way. I have never heard the work performed better or sound better than it does on this very copy.

Side Two

A++ to A+++, nearly White Hot, and with a little more bottom end it might have won the shootout.

Clear, transparent, rich, big, spacious, tonally correct, with Tubey Magical textured strings, this record is doing practically everything we want it to.

Side One

A+ to A++, very much like side two but even more bass shy, which may become wearisome over the course of the whole side, depending on how loud you play the record and how full-bodied your system is.

A superb performance of the famous piece, played with verve. (more…)