Tchaikovsky
Swan Lake Highlights / Fistoulari

This London UK import may be the best single-disc version of the ballet we have ever played. This is the one, folks, assuming you do not want a (nearly) complete performance of the work. (For that we recommend the 2 LP box set with Ansermet.)

This vintage 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 Swan Lake Highlights 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 1961
• 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.

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 Swan Lake

• 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.

Engineering

Kenneth Wilkinson engineered this album for Decca in 1961.

This is the kind of record that will make you want to take all your Heavy Vinyl classical pressings and put them in storage. They cannot 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 mediocrity.)

Quality record production is a lost art, and it's been lost for a very long time.

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

Act One

• Introduction
• Scene (No. 1)
• Valse (No. 2)
• Danse Des Coupes (No. 8)

Act 2

• Scene (No. 10)
• Scene (No. 11)
• Danses Des Petits Cygnes (Allegro Moderato) (No. 13d)

Side Two

Act 2 (continued)

• Danses Des Cygnes (Andante) (No. 13)

Act 3

• Danse Honroise - Czardas (No. 20)
• Pas De Neux (No. 5b)
• Scene (No. 24)

Act 4

• Danses Des Petits Cygnes (Moderato) (No.27)
• Scene Finale (No. 29)

Rave Reviews

It is a superb account of Swan Lake, perhaps better than most recordings out there. Maestro Fistoulari and the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam are in top form. The Act IV finale (abridged)will knock your socks off. The best finale recorded to date. Next to the old Ormandy mono LP of the 50's, Maestro Fistoulari also pounds out on the tippani and bass drum to the work's climax. The finale alone makes this a treasure to own. - by mangiafrani on May 19, 2008

This fully deserves the Penguin Rosette it achieved, and is my personal favorite Swan Lake. I own Monteux, Ansermat, Dorati, Rostropovich, Pletnev, and undoubtedly a few others I have forgotten. Great as the others are, this is the most alive, inspired and magical -- for me. Is it the best? Who can answer that. My point is that if you love this ballet, this is a recording that you simply must have. Though brief at 46 minutes, every moment is magical. - By Great Faulkner's Ghost on July 31, 2012