AAA 100% Analogue This LP was Remastered using Pure Analogue Components Only from the Master Tapes through to the Cutting Head
Speakers Corner / Philips - PHS 900-000 - 180 Gram Virgin Vinyl - AAA 100% Analogue
Limited Edition - Pure Analogue Audiophile Mastering - Pressed at Pallas Germany
Speakers Corner 25 Years Pure Analogue This LP is an Entirely Analogue Production
Piano Concertos 1 and 2, Sviatoslav Richter, LSO/Kyril Kondrashin - Speakers Corner Philips PHS 900-000
After finally being allowed to come to the West in 1960, Richter soon made LPs for CBS, RCA, DG, EMI and Philips. Extraordinary! His UK debut with Kondrashin was at the Albert Hall in July ’61 in Chopin, Dvorak and Liszt; the two Liszt Concertos (which you can find ‘live’, with the Hungarian Fantasy and Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise, on BBC Legends 4031-2) were then produced over three days at Walthamstow Assembly Hall, by a Mercury team. .
The results subsequently have become the benchmark coupling.
Sound Quality: 87% Christopher Breunig Hifi News
At $30, this Speakers Corner reissue is an easy recommendation. Buy it new and immediately enjoy this very special recording Sound 9/10 Daily Audiophile
Any pianist who tackles Franz Liszt’s great works must possess outstanding skills in many areas. Technical prowess is absolutely necessary to play the extremely difficult score, as is immense physical energy with the hefty onslaughts from the orchestra. But a great awareness of the unusual conceptual forms, refined energy and passion are also required to make the keyboard sing. At the beginning of the '60s Sviatoslav Richter seemed to possess all these attributes in an ideal equilibrium. With youthful energy he catapulted powerful chords against the First Concerto’s defiant theme in the orchestra, offering resistance only to join in later with the lyrical maelstrom of the orchestra. In the Second Concerto Richter exchanges heroic brilliance for an elegiac air, then becomes capricious with graceful arpeggios and a lyrical, firm melodiousness that fires the course of the work. In the Finale these twists and turns come together to form an emphatic single strand of spirited theme, brilliant cadenza and blustering orchestra.
"The sound is equally well balanced. The orchestra is arrayed behind Richter, and his piano sounds nothing short of tonally and dynamically realistic. The strings are at once serene and silky smooth, then jagged and harsh. The recording team captured it all beautifully, and the quiet pressing allows it to develop." - John Crossett, Theaudiobeat.com, 4/5 Music, 4.5/5 Sound!
Here the artists take the score as a starting-point, not some holy writ that must be adhered to at all-times, and mould performances of immense power and conviction. Sviatoslav Richter and Kyril Kondrashin treat Liszt’s Piano Concertos very seriously, where virtuosity is never used for anything other than expressive purposes. The first movement of the E flat Concerto is a genuine Allegro maestoso, with the lyrical episodes played very slowly and expressively. Kondrashin makes the start of the slow movement into an elegy, with marvellous string phrasing. Richter matches him in poetry and produces some breathtakingly soft and subtle trilling, while the finale is taken at a spacious tempo – it is marked Allegro moderato – with tremendous weight and attack; qualities that are magnified in the faster coda.
Musicians:
Sviatoslav Richter, piano
London Symphony
Kyril Kondrashin, conductor
Selections:
Franz Liszt (1811-1886)
1. Concerto No. 1 in E Flat Major
2. Concerto No. 2 in A Major
Recorded July 1961 at Walthamstow Assembly Hall, London, by C.R. Fine.
AAA 100% Analogue This Speakers Corner LP was remastered using pure analogue components only, from the master tapes through to the cutting head 25 Years pure Analogue
MADE FROM THE ORIGINAL MASTER TAPES
AAA 100% ANALOGUE - PURE ANALOGUE AUDIOPHILE MASTERING
We use the Original Tapes and work with only the Best Mastering Studios Worldwide
180 GRAM VIRGIN VINYL PLATED & PRESSED AT PALLAS GERMANY
Faithful Reproduction of the Original Artwork and Labels
LIMITED EDITION Released in Limited Quantities
All Licences and Mechanical Rights Paid
Are your records completely analogue?
Yes! This we guarantee!
As a matter of principle, only analogue masters are used, and the necessary cutting delay is also analogue. All our cutting engineers use only Neumann cutting consoles, and these too are analogue. The only exception is where a recording has been made – either partly or entirely – using digital technology, but we do not have such items in our catalogue at the present time
Are your records cut from the original masters?
In our re-releases it is our aim to faithfully reproduce the original intentions of the musicians and recording engineers which, however, could not be realised at the time due to technical limitations. Faithfulness to the original is our top priority, not the interpretation of the original: there is no such thing as a “Speakers Corner Sound”. Naturally, the best results are obtained when the original master is used. Therefore we always try to locate these and use them for cutting. Should this not be possible, – because the original tape is defective or has disappeared, for example – we do accept a first-generation copy. But this remains an absolute exception for us.
Who cuts the records?
In order to obtain the most faithful reproduction of the original, we have the lacquers cut on the spot, by engineers who, on the whole, have been dealing with such tapes for many years. Some are even cut by the very same engineer who cut the original lacquers of the first release. Over the years the following engineers have been and still are working for us: Tony Hawkins, Willem Makkee, Kevin Gray, Maarten de Boer, Scott Hull, and Ray Staff, to name but a few.
At the beginning of the ‘90s, in the early days of audiophile vinyl re-releases, the reissue policy was fairly straightforward. Companies such as DCC Compact Classics, Mobile Fidelity, Classic Records and others, including of course Speakers Corner, all maintained a mutual, unwritten code of ethics: we would manufacture records sourced only from analogue tapes.
Vinyl’s newfound popularity has led many other companies to jump on the bandwagon in the hope of securing a corner of the market. Very often they are not so ethical and use every imaginable source from which to master: CDs, LPs, digital files and even MP3s.
Even some who do use an analogue tape source employ a digital delay line, a misguided ’80s and ‘90s digital technology that replaces the analogue preview head originally used to “tell” the cutter head in advance what was about to happen musically, so it could adjust the groove “pitch” (the distance between the grooves) to make room for wide dynamic swings and large low frequency excursions. Over time analogue preview heads became more rare and thus expensive.
So while the low bit rate (less resolution than a 16 bit CD) digital delay line is less expensive and easier to use than an analogue “preview head”, its use, ironically, results in lacquers cut from the low bit rate digital signal instead of from the analogue source!
Speakers Corner wishes to make clear that it produces lacquers using only original master tapes and an entirely analogue cutting system. New metal stampers used to press records are produced from that lacquer. The only exceptions are when existing metal parts are superior to new ones that might be cut, which includes our release of “Elvis is Back”, which was cut by Stan Ricker or several titles from our Philips Classics series, where were cut in the 1990s using original master tapes by Willem Makkee at the Emil Berliner Studios. In those cases we used only the original “mother” to produce new stampers.
In addition, we admit to having one digital recording in our catalogue: Alan Parsons’ “Eye in the Sky”, which was recorded digitally but mixed to analogue tape that we used to cut lacquers.
In closing, we want to insure our loyal customers that, with but a few exceptions as noted, our releases are “AAA”— analogue tape, an all analogue cutting system, and newly cut lacquers.
60 Years Pallas
Audiophile Vinyl - Made in Germany For over 60 years the family business in the third generation of the special personal service and quality "Made by Pallas" is known worldwide. Our custom PVC formulation produces consistently high pressing quality with the lowest surface noise in the industry. Our PVC complies with 2015 European environmental standards and does not contain toxic materials such as Lead, Cadmium or Toluene. Our vinyl is both audiophile and eco-grade!
