Pictures at an Exhibition (orch. by Ravel) with Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the original version for piano with Sviatoslav Richter.

Gramola Ikonen continues. This series of standard-setting sound recordings serves the idea of saving records from oblivion which, due to their age, are no longer in the focus of the music-interested public and which, on the other hand, were recorded using outstanding analogue technology. Our mission is to restore these great icons of recording history to their rightful glory.

If there was a good reason to buy expensive stereo equipment in the 1950s and 1960s, it was the excellent recordings of the European Decca, the RCA Living Stereo recordings, the Mercury Living Presence recordings and the Columbia recordings from the USA. The early recordings of the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft, many of which were recorded in the Gedächtniskirche in Berlin, should not be forgotten in this context either.

The term “high fidelity”, coined back in the 1930s, only really came into its own with these excellent recordings, which is why these recordings retained their significance as a quality benchmark for decades. Here, both artistic and technical demands were met at the highest level. Since then, artistic and technical qualities have been judged separately as evaluation criteria in reviews. In our small series, we have brought together only recordings that deserve top marks in both criteria.

Recorded 1957, Chicago (orchestra) & 1958, Moscow (piano)