Dog Fight: ASD 3018 Tchaikovsky Manfred Symphony, LSO, Previn

ASD 3018 vs. Alto Reissue, Tchaikovsky Manfred Symphony
LSO, Previn

Performance: 3.5/5

Sound: 4/5

$10 Black & White Postage Stamp (Ring), $30 Alto

Dog Fight Pressing Comparison Series

Listen to CD Version 2nd and 3rd movements:
2nd      3rd

Performance:
Well one Amazon reviewer summed up Previn's performance; a bit lackluster.  I concur.

{Lord Byron published his dramatic poem Manfred in 1817, and since then several composers including Robert Schumann in 1849 and Peter Tchaikovsky in 1885 have set it to music. The poem is typical of the extravagant Romanticism of the young Byron, all about a tortured hero bedeviled by guilt over a mysterious affair with his half-sister Astarte, fleeing into the surrounding Alpine countryside, calling upon supernatural forces to free him of his pain, and then, tormented, rejected, downcast, and unable to forgive or forget but defiant to the end, finally dying unredeemed. How's that for melodrama?

In the case of Tchaikovsky, he was reluctant at first to set it to music. He felt Schumann had already done it well enough, and there was nothing more he could add. Besides, he was not too keen on doing any more programmatic music, music that told a story or described a scene, despite the success of his Romeo and Juliet and Tempest overtures and Swan Lake ballet some years earlier. Go figure. Still, at the urging of friends and after a visit to the Alpine regions where Byron laid out the story, he proceeded, anyway. When he completed the Manfred Symphony, he hailed it as one of his best works. Then, after its lukewarm public and critical reception, he practically disowned it, saying only the first movement was any good. An artist's temperamental disposition, maybe, or just a reaction to apparent disapproval? Fortunately, the work survived (as did Tchaikovsky's interest in literary subjects, his doing a Hamlet overture a couple of years later as well as the Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker ballets).}  from right here on blogspot: http://classicalcandor.blogspot.com/2010/06/tchaikovsky-manfred-symphony-sacd.html

Sound:
The fourth movement is the powerhouse and gets a full side on the German Alto reissue, with the 2nd and 3rd movements on side 2 of this 3 side reissue (the fourth side is blank). Mr. Salvatore refers to these three sided Alto's as stupendous and they do make his Basic list. Perhaps with the right system the Alto's can deliver some memorable dynamics, but to my ears they fall short versus the original ASD Ring pressing. While the Alto offers a little more oomph in the lows, the Ring does well in this regard. The Ring is able to integrate the bass with the hall sound to a much greater degree than the Alto. The Alto also suffers from a dryness in the strings that firmly relegates it into second place. The original Ring pressing just does a better job of integrating everything with a better more layered soundstage and a more sublime sound.  The Ring also appears to achieve a slightly lower noise floor.

The later EMI releases all have issues with delivering truly dynamic bass featuring a tight, constrained bass presentation.  I suspect much of the issue is in the tape recordings themselves.  One can get stupendous bass from these same later pressings when they are a reissue of the golden age EMI recordings or those from the mid-sixties.

The other area where the later pressings fall down is the midrange.  With the strings, there just is not enough rosin on the bow so to speak.  I suspect this is due to the introduction of integrated circuits into the recording chain in place of discrete transistors.  The more complex signal path in these designs just appears to bleach the colors out of the midrange.  The impact is not as bad with the reissues of earlier material on these labels.  The Ring pressing may have the best midrange of the later labels, but it does not have as good a noise floor.

The Ring does rate a 4 for sound overall despite these deficiencies.  Be sure to listen to the fourth movement as it is the sonic powerhouse on this LP.  Later EMI pressings may be a possibility for this record, but I suspect their benefits will not outweigh the further loss of what midrange is on the original tapes.