Violin Moves All Over the Sound Stage

I would go to Discogs, find that album, and see what has received the highest user ratings for the various releases. No guarantee, but it is a start.

I streamed the Great Performance version, that wasn’t too bad actually, I enjoyed it. There is another by Columbia from the 60’s, and my guess is it could be pretty darn good. I’m not sure it’s available in digital/CD format though.

I purchase a lot of period classical LP’s, have 22 arriving tomorrow, and you can’t go wrong with a Columbia Masterworks release, typically. The Great Performance series were actually Columbia releases by CBS. When Sony took over Columbia/CBS, they put out some really nice remastered old classical recordings, but limited. I highly doubt they remastered that album.

He is supposed to stay at center-left but through some pressings I have heard similar panning “movement,” which I suspect is due to warps in the groove or imperfections in the master tape stereo transfer back in the day. Might help to listen only in mono. 

Does anyone know which version of this performance is the best engineered recording? 

Depends. The original recording is by definition the best engineered. All anyone can do from that point on is monkey around with that master tape. A really good engineer might be able to remaster the master and have it sound better. But not likely. Because this is a very old recording. You get into the whole thing of the original master tape quality.   

This is why almost always the best you will ever get of these is to play the vinyl. Almost always the original vinyl pressings were made with the best tape source available at the time. Usually the master tape. This was before music got to be such big business the suits started making them make a copy of the master and lock it away, so everything is a copy of a copy. Back in the day everyone was actually concerned with fidelity. This was a big deal. I know. What a concept. Crazy thing, crept into all kinds of other areas too, musicianship, songwriting, lyrics. Sinatra, Torme, those guys could actually sing.   

Where was I? Oh yeah. So you come along today asking what version of this performance was the best engineered? The question literally makes no sense. First, there is only one performance on tape. There are no other versions of this performance. The performance is by definition one of a kind. Never to be repeated.  

Possibly you mean what is the best performance of this piece of music? Which is fine. But also completely different than recording, which is different than engineering.  

We were talking about this piece of music being reissued, and mastered from mono to stereo. So a lot of different things going on and hard to tell which of them you are talking about.

Might help to listen only in mono.

Yep, have many mono LP’s, and enjoy them.

Or

Find a newer release/performance of this piece. But, I don’t think you will find the Stern/Bernstein/NY version that fixes the issue in digital. I think only a couple were released.

I have a solution: switch to Milstein or Zukerman.