Found a vinyl copy of the Mercury Living Presence Stereo release of Dorati & the Minneapolis Symphony doing Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture
This led us to have an 1812 "shootout." (Appropriate term for this particular comparison, isn't it?)
Compared it to the Reiner/ Chicago RCA Shaded Dog (45RPM Classic Records reissue)
And the Telarc Kunzel/Cincinnati Pops CD with its legendary digital cannons.
For starters all three were good performance musically, although if pushed I would have to give the edge to the Reiner performance (The differences were small and I just happen to be partial to Reiner's style and readings, but I could certainly live with any one of the three.)
As is often the case the Mercury pressing is a bit on the noisy side. It doesn't look bad from a visual inspection perspective, but when played exhibits quite a bit of surface noise. To the point of being quite noticeable and at times quite annoying.
I think the RCA had the best overall SQ. partially because it is a 200g 45 RPM pressing from Classic Records and partially because the RCA Living Stereo series, in general, tended to have a warmer and more lush sound that the Mercury Living Presence Stereo series. Unfortunately the RCA release contains no cannons or gunshots and therefor as good as it is musically, it does not have the excitement of the other releases. (In fact when the Dorati Mercury, with its real cannons was released a month or so after the Reiner, RCA pulled the Reiner from the shelves and deleted it from the catalog. I guess this is what happens when you let the marketing people run the show.
)
The Telarc is, of course, the Granddaddy of all cannon recordings this CD was responsible for sending many speakers off to never-never land.
The LP is just as dangerous, but most people backed off the volume because the heard there cartridges mistrack the wide excursion grooves and tended to back off the volume more when playing the LP.But the CD never mistracked and probably burnt out more drives that any other recording in history. However on a system that can handle it the cannon shots sound really impressive. (My Thiel CS6s and the 250 wpc Classe Twenty-five really give this CD a run for its money.) The unfortunate side effect of this is that the cannon shots need so much dynamic headroom that the rest of the music is kind of compressed down into the lower sound level end of the range.
All good and each with their own sets of strengths and shortcoming, all three deserve a place in any serious classical music collection.
