Vintage covers for this album are hard to find in exceptionally clean shape. Most of the will have at least some amount of ringwear, seam wear and edge wear. We guarantee that the cover we supply with this Hot Stamper is at least VG

This EMI import pressing gives you the complete Pictures at an Exhibition with a top performance and superb sonics from first note to last.

As this is my All Time Favorite performance of Pictures, this record naturally comes very highly recommended. Pictures is a piece of music that has been recorded countless times, and I've played scores of different recordings, but the only one that truly satisfies is this one, Muti's 1979 recording with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Much like Previn and the LSO's performance of The Planets, he finds the music in the work that no one else seems to.

For his 1979 review of the Mussorgsky, Robert Layton in the Gramophone writes of Muti and The Philadelphia Orchestra :

...what orchestral playing they offer us. The lower strings in ‘Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle’ have an extraordinary richness, body and presence, and “Baba Yaga”, which opens the second side, has an unsurpassed virtuosity and attack as well as being of demonstration standard as a recording. The glorious body of tone, the richly glowing colours, the sheer homogeneity of the strings and perfection of the ensemble is a constant source of pleasure.

Of the Stravinsky Layton writes:

...Muti’s reading is second to none and the orchestral playing is altogether breathtaking. The recording is amazingly lifelike and truthful.

What The Best Sides Of This EMI 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
• 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.

That EMI Sound

Produced in 1979, naturally there would have to be a slightly multi-miked quality to the recording. If you've been playing true Golden Age records all day (the way we often do) you will notice that the instruments are more naturally and correctly spaced and sized on the best of those recordings.

But this is still a knockout record, one which is guaranteed to bring any stereo to its knees. The dynamics, the deep bass and the sheer power of the orchestra are going to be a tough test for any system.

What does the typical EMI pressing of this album sound like?

To be honest, not that good. Sour brass, smeary or shrill strings, a lack of bass -- the mid-hall dead-as-a-doornail sound that those of us who've played these EMI's by the score have come to expect. Most of the copies are spacious, but so what? The timbre of the instruments is often unnatural and in my book that trumps any claimed benefits in the areas of soundstaging or depth.

What We're Listening For On Pictures at an Exhibition

• 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.

Only the better pressings provide the presence and immediacy needed to involve you completely in the work. The strings on the good copies have rosiny texture. The brass has weight -- perhaps not the full measure of an RCA or London recording, but at least you get the impression that those instruments are trying to sound correct.

And the bass drum really goes deep, which it rarely does on the Golden Age recordings I've auditioned.

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 originals.

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.

A Must Own Classical Record

This should be part of any serious Classical Collection. Other Must Own classical recordings can be found .