Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Stravinsky Available Now
This is probably one of the better Speakers Corner Deccas.
We haven’t played a copy of this pressing in years, but back in the day we liked it, so let’s give it a “B” for sound with the caveat that the older the review, the more likely we are to have changed our minds about the grade.
Come to think of it, it’s somewhat misleading to say that we change our minds at all.
Most of the time we are forced to raise our standards, or, to be more pedantic, have our standards raised by simply hearing better sounding pressings than the ones we had previously auditioned. This is an insight that came to us by doing regular shootouts, answering a question that we, along with every other serious audiophile, never thought to ask: “How high is up?”
It’s also one that, like so many other big questions in this crazy hobby of ours, can never be satisfactorily answered.
Back to this Heavy Vinyl Pressing. We can’t be sure if we would still agree with what we wrote when this record came out, but here it is anyway.
“Excellent sound with a wonderful performance from Ansermet.”
Currently our favorite Firebird is an early pressing on Mercury with Dorati conducting. Our opinion is very unlikely to change concerning the best combination of sound and performance. The record is simply a monster on the right pressing.
We have never heard an especially good sounding London or Decca of Ansermet’s performance, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. We tend to avoid judging records we have not played and we encourage the audiophile community to do the same.