My short List of RCA Living Stereo must haves...

[rockitman]

I was asked by someone to give a list of my favs. This is only the short list...

Ballet Music From the Opera/Fistoulari - LSC 2400
Witch's Brew/Gibson - LSC 2225
Carnival/Schumann - LSC 2450
Elgar Enigma/Monteux - LSC 2418
Tchaikovsky 1812/Reiner -LSC 2241
Prokofieff Lieutenant Kije/Reiner - LSC 2150
Mussorgsky's Pictures At an Exhibition/Reiner - LSC 2201
Respighi Pines of Rome/Reiner - LSC 2436
Festival/Reiner - LSC 2423
Rimsky-Korsakoff Schelerazade/Reiner - LSC 2446
Tchaikovshy Cappriccio Italien/Kondrashin - LSC 2323
The Reiner Sound/Reiner - LSC 2183
Bartok Music For Strings - LSC 2374

 

[DaveyF]

To those, I would add:

Offenbach, Gaite Paisienne/Fiedler LSC 1817
Strauss, Also Sprach Zarathustra/ Reiner LSC 1806
Ravel, Daphnis & Chloe/ Munch LSC 1893
Debussy, Iberia/Reiner LSC 2222
Walton, Facade Suite, Le Coq/ Williamson, LSC 2285
Venice/Solti, LSC 2313
Kabalesky, The Comedians/Kondrashin, LSC 2398
Ballet Music of Gounod LSC 2449-- This one's getting VERY hard to find.
Prokofiev, Second Piano Concerto/ Malcolm Frager. LSC 2465
Milhaud, La creation Du Monde LSC 2625
Moussorgsky, The Power of the Orchestra, Gerhardt. LSC 2659
Everything But the Beer/Fiedler. LSC 6082
Albeniz, Iberia/Ravel. LSC 6094
Lalo, Symphonie Espagnole/ Hendl. LSC 2456

 

[rockitman]

great thread ! Thanks of contributing.

 

[rockitman]

Venice/Solti, LSC 2313
I recently won a 3 lp, single sided 45 rpm test pressing that was unreleased. I have been hunting a while for this and to get the rare Classic Records 180 gram 45, even better.

 

[Ronm1]

One of my favorites has always been

Beethoven|Mendelsohn violin concertos - Heifetz*Munch BSO
The SACD reissue with 3ch is great.

 

[puroagave]

Don't forget these...

Power of the orchestra LSC 2659
clair de lune LSC 2326
Bizet L´Arlesienne/Morel LSC 2327
Sibelius Sym No 5 LSC 2405
Rachmaninoff - readers digest box

 

[astrotoy]

I would add the Ansermet Royal Ballet Box - LDS6065 - the original is extremely pricey and hard to find - the 45RPM set by Classics is very fine and their deluxe 33RPM box is a fine reproduction of the Soria original.

Also DaveyF in the LSC2285 Walton Facade, do you mean Wilkinson (as in "Wilkie" the Decca engineer)?

When I interviewed Mike Mailes, an old Decca engineer, last month for my Decca book, he told me that when they were in DC recording Dorati and the National Symphony in the Headline series album "The Plague" one of the members of the orchestra (he doesn't know who, but my guess is Lewis Lipnick, the contrabassoonist who wrote for Stereophile) told him that some of the RCA Living Stereo albums sounded just as good as the best Decca albums. He mentioned a few like "Witches Brew" and "Venice". Mike told him that those and a bunch more were actually recorded, produced and engineered by Decca, mostly the great Kenneth Wilkinson, who one of Mike's mentors.

I noticed on the lists that people have submitted, that aside from the Reiner Chicago Symphony recordings, most of the recordings listed were recorded by Decca. They include LSC 2225, 2285, 2313, 2326, 2327, 2400, 2405, 2418, 2449, 2450, 2465, LDS6065, 6094. Also VCS (not LSC) 2659 - Power of the Orchestra and the Reader's Digest Rachmaninoff Concertos with Earl Wild were done by Decca. There are a bunch more, like LSC2077, Strauss Till Eulenspiegel by Reiner with the Vienna Philharmonic.

For many of the RCA-Decca recordings, Decca retained ownership of the albums and RCA had a 10 year exclusive. So a decade or so later, around 1970, Decca released many of them on their bargain Eclipse ECS series or even their super bargain World of Music SPA series. So you can get "Witches Brew" in Decca SPA 175 (with one extra selection) under the title "Danse Macabre" for a small fraction of the cost of an original "Witches Brew." Sonics are quite excellent.

Larry

Larry

 

[puroagave]

yes the best sounding classical living stereos were the Decca recordings, better yet with "wilkie" turning the knobs, so to speak.

if i were to rebuild a classical music collection id put the big money on original Decca SXL 2000 & 6000 series LPs. I noticed Ying Tan (ORG) is releasing some of the film music series on 45 rpm wax, they were originally released on RCA w/ charles gerhardt and engineered by Wilkie. these were some of the best if not the best film music ever recorded for content and sound. the Citizen kane cut with kiri te kanawa and the big bass drum always sends a shiver up my spine and is a tour de force demo piece to boot.

 

[astrotoy]

A couple more RCA's for opera lovers, again Decca engineered. LDS6164 Carmen and LDS7022 Tosca, both with Leontyne Price and Karajan and the Vienna Philharmonic.

I agree with Rob's listing of the Gehrhardt RCA film music. Several are on the TAS Super Disc list. I especially like the Seahawk - Music Eric Korngold album. Gehrhardt really liked Korngold's music and hired his son George to produce some of the albums he did at Decca including the Film series that Wilkie engineered. One nice surprise I found in a used LP RCA ARL1-707 (British pressing) Bernard Herrmann's "Citizen Kane" with Te Kanawa doing the soprano. When I took out the sleeve, this is what I saw. The clerk said, if they had seen it, the price would have been much higher. For those who don't read music, those are the first bars of "Citizen Kane." In small letter it says "Prelude to C. K."