Ernest Ansermet’s 1949 recording of Stravinsky’s complete Petrouchka ballet was hailed as an audiophile milestone in the early days of long playing discs. Indeed, Stravinsky’s colorful scoring lent itself well to Decca’s full frequency range engineering. A year later, though, Leopold Stokowski brought his trusty pickup orchestra into the studio to record Petrouchka, boasting superior players and more vivid sound. And when Ansermet remade Petrouchka in 1957, he had the benefit of stereo technology and, more importantly, an improved, more tightly-knit orchestra. Similarly, Ansermet’s stereo Le Sacre du printemps encompasses sonic and executional advantages over his 1950 mono version, as well as more adroitly effected tempo relationships.
To be sure, record buyers in 1951 possibly would have preferred Ansermet’s leaner textures and greater horizontal clarity to Edward van Beinum’s plusher, more opaque sound world in Decca’s previous version of the Rite. On the other hand, Monteux/Boston and Markevitch/Philharmonia lurked just around the bend, with even better mono Rites on the horizon from Dorati/Minneapolis and Ormandy/Philadelphia. Classica D’Oro appears to have remastered these performances from excellent LP pressings, but filtering the top end and taming the bass. Out of curiosity I pulled down my scratchy old copies of the original LPs, and they sounded more vibrant and dynamic.
