Re: [ARSCLIST] Cetra pressings

[David Lennick <dlennick@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ooooooh.....red and blue Angel pressings......I'm starting to fling those 
against the wall just about every time I find them. Whoever mastered those 
things must have had peanut butter in his ears. Ludicrous EQ, cutter hum, low 
levels..absolute garbage when compared to the original English issues. For 
years I had mint pressings of all the Walter Gieseking Debussy programs on blue 
label pressings I got in 1967, direct from the manufacturer, and couldn't 
understand how such rotten recordings could have been so highly acclaimed.

Compare the US and English pressings of Khachaturian conducting "Gayne". I 
mentioned this a few weeks ago because the English version is so over-recorded 
I have trouble tracking it, but the US version sounds like AM radio.

Another Capitol LP that has the FDS logo is so ghastly sounding I can't believe 
their "panel of experts" approved it..Maria Kurenko singing Mussorgsky. Great 
artistry, but the thing sounds as if it was dubbed from 78 lacquers.

dl

Roger and Allison Kulp wrote:
> Not being an opera buff,I would assume it has something to do with the master tape,and the way it was recorded.As for Capitol pressings,of the late 50s,and 60s,I think they have been unfairly maligned by classical listeners.And this is true for the red and blue stereo Angels,too.As the UK/European/Australian EMIs of the first decade of stereo become less and less plentiful,I am seein more non-US listeners/buyers reevaluate these records.And I'm not just saying this,because I own several times as many 1958-68 Angels,as I do non-US EMIs of the same period.Do an A to B sometime of an original red/blue stereo Angel,and a later UK EMI "Greensleeve" of the same recording.
>
>
>                             Roger
> David Lennick <dlennick@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: Okay, I found Gianni Schicchi on a later Capitol Cetra pressing. Like night and 
> day..the Capitol rolls everything off and sounds like a 1930s radio aircheck. 
> But it's STILL distorted and unlistenable. I'm writing off this whole set (how 
> could anybody not know how ghastly some of these things sounded? Fancy 
> packaging and all). Let us presume that an Italian issue isn't going to be any 
> better.
>
> David Lennick wrote:
> > Anyone know if the early 50s Puccini one-acters (Gianni Schicchi, Il 
> > Tabarro, Suor Angelica) sound any better on Italian pressings than they 
> > do in the American ones, which seldom rise above the ghastly? Molto 
> > distorto, especially in choruses and ensemble passages and I swear I 
> > heard radio static once or twice. (Gianni is also mastered off-speed, 
> > 2.4% fast on side 1.)
> >
> > Grazie.
> >
> > dl
>
>
>        
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