Grainger / Rogers / Milhaud / Strauss
Winds In Hi-Fi / Fennell

*NOTE: On side 1, there is a large bubble in the vinyl that plays as 22 light thuds near the end of track 7 / the first movement of Three Japanese Dances (Rogers) - "Dance With Pennons." There is a mark that plays 8 times lightly at the start of track 8 / the second movement of Three Japanese Dances (Rogers) - "Dance Of Mourning." There is a scuff that plays as 18 light ticks about 1/2 way into the same movement.

On side 2, track 1 / the first movement of Suite Française (Milhaud) - (a) "Normandie" plays Mint Minus Minus to EX++. There is also a swoosh that plays very lightly and intermittently for the first 60 seconds of track 2 / the second movement of Suite Française (Milhaud) - b) Bretagne."

Harry Pearson put this record on his TAS list of Super Discs many years ago, but, like so many amazingly good recordings from the golden age, it no longer appears to qualify for inclusion.

The credit must go to Fennel along with the brilliant engineering team at Mercury. I’ve been told that he was a stickler for making sure everyone was perfectly in tune and playing correctly within the ensemble. That’s exactly what you hear when you play a record like this — it’s practically sonic perfection.

Fennell made a number of band music recordings for Mercury. My favorite is British Band Classics Vol. 2, which was the first Mercury recording I ever heard. I went out and bought a copy of it immediately from my local Tower Records on Golden Import.

Years later when I heard the real thing, and original pressing, I realized the Golden Import was a pretty second rate reissue, fine for the $4.99 I might have paid but a big step down from the early pressings.

Also, if you ever see a clean copy of Vol. 1, only available in Mono, pick it up. If it’s cut right it, too, is out of this world.

What The Best Sides Of Winds In Hi-Fi Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

• The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
• The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1959
• Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
• Natural tonality in the midrange -- with all the instruments having the correct timbre
• Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space

No doubt there's more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.

What We're Listening For On Winds In Hi-Fi

• Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
• The Big Sound comes next -- wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
• Then transient information -- fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
• Powerful bass -- which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
• Next: transparency -- the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
• Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing -- an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

Vinyl Condition

Mint Minus Minus is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)

Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of other pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don't have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful recordings.

If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that's certainly your prerogative, but we can't imagine losing what's good about this music -- the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight -- just to hear it with less background noise.

Side One

Lincolnshire Posy - Grainger

• "Lisbon Bay" (Sailor's Song)
• "Horkstow Grange" (The Miser And His Man - A Local Tragedy)
• "Rufford Park Poachers" (Poaching Song)
• "The Brisk Young Sailor" (Who Returned To Wed His True Love)
• "Lord Melbourne" (War Song)
• "The Lost Lady Found" (Dance Song)

Three Japanese Dances - Rogers

• Dance With Pennons
• Dance Of Mourning
• Dance With Swords

Side Two

Suite Française - Milhaud

• (a) Normandie
• (b) Bretagne
• (c) Île De France
• (d) Alsace-Lorraine
• (e) Provence

Serenade In E Flat - Strauss