Mercury Living Presence SR 90123
Mendelssohn: Fingal's Cave Overture, Symphony No. 3 "Scotch"
Antal Dorati, conductor
London Symphony OrchestraPressing: US, dark maroon label, pressed by Columbia Records
Condition: EX
Date first published:
Stampers:
CBFR-3, CBFR-3
Performance: 10/10
Sound: 8/10
Price range: $27-100 (mean $47) on popsike.com
Comments: This one is usually on the list of the better-sounding Mercury Living Presence recordings and I'm pretty sure it has made it to the TAS list at one point or another. In my listening experience, Antal Dorati's recordings with the London Symphony Orchestra were better recorded than those with his home band, the Minneapolis Orchestra. This one is a good testament to his fine work with the LSO. The LSO plays the hell out of the Scotch and the Hebrides, and the recorded sound is clear, natural, and dynamic. My copy has CBFR stampers, denoting that it was pressed by Columbia Records in the mid-1960s. I've read that a number of these Columbia-pressed Mercury recordings suffered from excessive surface noise. Without the original Mercury pressings for comparison, I couldn't comment on this, but I didn't feel that the surface noise on my copy interfered with the music.
I've never liked the Columbia pressings much, but seems they were cbrfr not cbfr. FR is the original RCA pressing and I wonder if this is related. Was the lettering typeset like an RCA?
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