Beethoven
Symphony No. 4 / Coriolan Overture / Ansermet

*NOTE: This record was not noisy enough to rate our M-- to EX++ grade, but it's not quite up to our standards for Mint Minus Minus either. If you're looking for quiet vinyl, this is probably not the best copy for you.

These Nearly White Hot Stamper pressings have top-quality sound that's often surprisingly close to our White Hots, but they sell at substantial discounts to our Shootout Winners, making them a relative bargain in the world of Hot Stampers ("relative" meaning relative considering the prices we charge). We feel you get what you pay for here at Better Records, and if ever you don't agree, please feel free to return the record for a full refund, no questions asked.

This vintage London pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn't showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to "see" the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It's what vintage all analog recordings are known for -- this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it -- not often, and certainly not always -- but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

What The Best Sides Of Beethoven's Symphony No. 4 / Coriolan Overture 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.

Copies with rich lower mids and nice extension up top did the best in our shootout, assuming they weren't veiled or smeary of course. So many things can go wrong on a record. We know, we've heard them all.

Top end extension is critical to the sound of the best copies. Lots of old records (and new ones) have no real top end; consequently, the studio or stage will be missing much of its natural air and space, and instruments will lack their full complement of harmonic information.

Tube smear is common to most vintage pressings. The copies that tend to do the best in a shootout will have the least (or none), yet are full-bodied, tubey and rich.

Size and Space

One of the qualities that we don’t talk about on the site nearly enough is the SIZE of the record’s presentation. Some copies of the album just sound small -- they don’t extend all the way to the outside edges of the speakers, and they don’t seem to take up all the space from the floor to the ceiling. In addition, the sound can often be recessed, with a lack of presence and immediacy in the center.

Other copies -- my notes for these copies often read “BIG and BOLD” -- create a huge soundfield, with the music positively jumping out of the speakers. They’re not brighter, they’re not more aggressive, they’re not hyped-up in any way, they’re just bigger and clearer.

And most of the time those very special pressings are just plain more involving. When you hear a copy that does all that -- a copy like this one -- it’s an entirely different listening experience.

What We're Listening For On Symphony No. 4 / Coriolan Overture

• 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.

Production and Engineering

James Walker was the producer, Roy Wallace the engineer for these sessions from October of 1958 in Geneva’s glorious Victoria Hall. It’s yet another remarkable disc from the Golden Age of Vacuum Tube Recording.

The gorgeous hall the Suisse Romande recorded in was possibly the best recording venue of its day; possibly of all time. More amazing sounding recordings were made there than in any other hall we know of. There is a solidity and richness to the sound beyond all others, yet clarity and transparency are not sacrificed in the least.

It’s as wide, deep and three-dimensional as any, which is of course all to the good, but what makes the sound of these recordings so special is the weight and power of the brass, combined with timbral accuracy of the instruments in every section.

This is the kind of record that will make you want to take all your Heavy Vinyl classical pressings and put them in storage. None of them, I repeat not a single one, can begin to sound the way this record sounds. (Before you put them in storage or on eBay please play them against this pressing so that you can be confident in your decision to rid yourself of their insufferable mediocrity.)

Vinyl Condition

Mint Minus Minus and maybe a bit better 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

• 1st Mov.: Adagio-Allegro Vivace
• 2nd Mov.: Adagio

Side Two

• 3rd Mov.: Allegro Vivace
• 4th Mov.: Allegro Ma Non Troppo
• Overture "Coriolan", Op. 62

About this Piece

If Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4 has been neglected by music historians and commentators, there are probably several reasons for this, the most obvious being when it was composed. Specifically, in Beethoven’s chronology it had the misfortune to be placed between that great “watershed work” Symphony No. 3 (“Eroica”) and the Symphony No. 5. But it was also surrounded by such great works as the “Appassionata” Sonata, Op. 57, the three Razumovsky Quartets, Op. 59, the opera Fidelio, Op. 72, Piano Concerto No. 4, Op. 58, and the Violin Concerto, Op. 61. These works all fall very close to each other in time; they all succeed the historic innovation of Symphony No. 3, and they all embody what has come to be called Beethoven’s “symphonic ideal.”

The symphonic ideal is of a two-fold nature: technical and extra-musical. Beginning with the “Eroica,” Beethoven expanded virtually every dimension of sonata style to a degree that was unfathomable at the time – and in many ways, still is. Technically, this means that all structural elements, including harmony, rhythm, melody, key relationships, chord spacing, and instrumentation were integrated so that each element is reflective of the others. By isolating an element such as a melodic fragment or a harmony in one movement, and then transplanting it to another in order to develop it further, Beethoven expanded the process of “thematic recurrence,” thereby demonstrating the organic unity of all elements. This revolutionary unity of form raised the classical relationship of part-to-whole to a higher level. It is almost as though Beethoven was writing music about music.

Equal in importance to the technical aspect of the symphonic ideal is that of the extra-musical and, by way of implication, the psychological. In fact, the technical and extra-musical/psychological aspects cannot be separated. For it is Beethoven’s intellectual penetration and manipulation of his materials, and the resulting organic growth of “evolving” themes and their dramatic interplay with all the forces of the symphony that suggests a kind of heroic psychological journey toward individuation. A programmatic title such as “Eroica” (heroic) consciously given to a work that its author knew to mark a turning point in modern symphonic writing boldly states the case. It is this aspect of his work that is identified as “romantic,” in spite of the absolute “classicism” of the musical structures.

Though the Symphony No. 4 shares many aspects of the symphonic ideal with its immediate siblings, it does not necessarily wear its psychological meaning on its sleeve. It could be that this lack of psychological catharsis is the reason for the neglect by the commentators, as it is often tossed off as being a pint of relaxation between the titanic intellectual demands of the “Eroica” and the Symphony No. 5. What it lacks in “seriousness” is balanced by its directness and its classically contained power.

The Adagio introduction of the first movement establishes an ambience of suspense by avoiding the key of the Symphony, for 42 measures. Beethoven presents a theme in the strings that hovers harmonically between G-flat major and B-flat minor and is made up of interlocking melodic thirds. The music then moves through a series of keys until it reaches the tone A, at which point both the tempo and volume increase into the Allegro vivace and the “real” key of B-flat major. The movement ends with a codetta based on the first theme.

In the Adagio second movement, the opening accompanimental figure threads its way through the movement as a series of rhythmical metamorphoses with each statement of thematic or transitional material, but always appears in its original form with each repetition of the first theme. The movement ends with a brief coda followed by the accompaniment figure played as timpani solo.

By any other name, the Menuetto would be a Scherzo, a scherzo and trio that is. The trio section contrasts with the scherzo by way of a slightly slower tempo and more prominence given to the woodwinds.

The infectious joviality of the fourth movement is attributable to the 16th-note subject stated in the strings. The second subject, played by the oboe, offers the only textural change to the perpetual motor rhythm of the 16th-note motion. Beethoven finally brings this riotous moto perpetuo to an end by increasing the note values of a fragmented first subject to eighth notes separated by rests, thereby creating the effect of a gradual winding down. This brief caesura is dispelled as the 16th-note motion sarcastically returns to punctuate the symphony.

- Steve Lacoste, LAPhil.com