Eiji Oue & Minnesota Orchestra - Stravinsky: The Firebird Suite & The Song Of The Nightingale

This recording from 1996 was made by the team around "Prof." Keith O. Johnson captured at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis in January 1996. However, it should take until 2011 for them to be released on LP for the first time and promise a terrific sound enjoyment. The spectacular recordings are presented dynamically and with the best fine resolution on one LP side each. The LP appears as a 33 rpm version in a gatefold cover.

What you should know about the new Reference Recordings LPs:

The Californian specialists for sonorous recordings at the highest technical level took a long time to really try out everything before finally introducing LPs again. This process took more than three years, because you didn't just want to be one of many who put on vinyl again, but wanted to be at the forefront of what is technically possible.

Originally an attempt was made to cut the self-recordings with a typical varnish cutting machine in the RTI press shop in Camarillo, but the dynamic range of the recording was simply too large for the machines there and the varnish cut already contained distortions. The next step led to Germany and a half-speed DMM cut and a test press (at Pallas in Diepholz) were carried out. The result was excellent dynamically, but the sound was almost identical to that of a CD. This might have been worth striving for in the 80s, but today the expectation of vinyl is much higher and reference recordings are no exception.

The LPs that have now been released were cut on a newly built half-speed machine in Paul Stubblebine's studio in San Francisco. This machine cuts classically in lacquer film and uses a special design by old master Nelson Pass as a cutting amplifier. The final piece in this puzzle, however, was Acoustic Sounds' new record press plant in Kansas. There they have been working with Reference Recordings for decades and pressing 200g vinyl in a completely rebuilt factory. A special feature is a 30-second long still groove in front of the outlet groove, which allows the pickup to be lifted before the end of the LP.

180-gram or 200-gram pressing - a question that is not that easy.

For identical titles from Reference Recordings, there are covers labeled 180 g containing LPs that weigh around 200 g, and vice versa. This is due to the fact that the commissioned pressing plants QRT and RTI in the USA specify a 10 percent tolerance for weight on the one hand and then occasionally simply get the orders mixed up. In terms of sound, the pressings do not differ.

Track-list:

Side A

The Firebird Suite

Side B

The Song of the Nightingale