EMI ASD 252 Beecham Goes French Again ... in Stereo (Or Is It?)

EMI HMV ASD 252
Bizet "L'Arlesienne" Suites 1 & 2
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Sir Thomas Beecham, conductor

Pressing: W/G

Stampers: 2YEA 3-18, 2YEA 4-13

Performance:  8/10

Sound:  5/10

Price range:  $29-162, mean $57 on popsike

Comments:  This review marks the first in a new continuing series of reviews of the audiophile EMI ASD label, which were produced at around the same time in parallel with the EMI Columbia SAX series and continued long after the discontinuation of the SAX series.  Since I've commented on a few of these in the past few posts, I thought I'd go ahead and start taking a closer look at these as well.  I hope you enjoy reading, and as always, I welcome your comments.

This was one of the first EMI ASD records I ever purchased back in the early 2000s.  While I can't remember the exact dealer from whom I bought this album, I know that it was a UK dealer and the price was around 40 GBP at the time.  A friend of mine picked his copy up for $1 at a used book sale in the suburbs of Washington, DC.  I recently posted a blog reviewing Beecham's French Romantic Music mono EMI ALP album ... this album is in the same vein except it's not in mono but in very early stereo.  So early, I believe, that it's rather hard to tell that its actually a stereo recording.  As I listened to the LP today, the orchestra seemed rather congested right in the center of the sound stage.  Now it may not have been quite as centered as a mono recording would be, but it was pretty close.  In my experience, a number of the really early stereo recordings (e.g. Beecham's Scheherazade recording) from EMI sound like this.  (As an aside, this is not something I've ever experienced with the early stereo recordings from RCA, even with the earliest ones which were recorded in 1954 and 1955.  Perfect example would be the recording of Also Sprach Zarathustra with Fritz Reiner (LSC 1806) or the Gaite Parisienne with Arthur Fiedler (LSC 1817) ... these have very wide soundstages.)  The performance here is nice -- you already know that I'm not a big fan of these works -- but the sound just doesn't cut it for me, which is why I don't listen to this record all that often.  I think of it as a mono sounding record in a beautiful laminated heavy cover with a Gaughin painting.  That's just too bad.