RCA Living Stereo SACD batch 3


I just today received my shipment of the latest batch of RCA Living Stereo SACD's. I thought I'd see who else has them, and what they thought about them.
I've listened to 2 of them:

Chopin - Piano Concerto's 1 & 2 - Arthur Rubinstein
Strauss - Scenes from Salome and Elektra - Reiner/CSO & Inge Borkh

I thought the Chopin disc had too much spurious noise in the background and also sounded bright.
The Strauss was very, very good.

tfkaudio
I've been only mildly disappointed in these, but not for any lack of detail or most other characteristics that might be attributed to the DSD recording format. Instead, I find that there is a slightly metallic sound to several of these that probably exists because the playback deck used differs from the ones RCA used to make the CD transfers a decade ago.

The Stokowski Rhapsodies comes to mind first, but the Munch Saint-Saƫns from the first set of 10 doesn't seem befitting of the original analog sound either.

Still, these are head and shoulders above most of the classical recordings I've heard on SACD.
The Mahler 4th is by The CSO with Fritz Reiner conducting. Soprano is Lisa Della Casa. Recorded in 1958.
I agree with Texasdave and the Heifetz recording from batch 2 might be my favorite of the bunch. Certainly musically, if not sonically.
Right now I'm gettting set to play the Frank Symphony in D and Petrouchka. More on that later.

Tfkaudio: Thanks for the info. What performance of the Mahler Fourth is this? Enquiring minds want to know. Also, I got the Heifetz/Hendl/Chicago SO Sibelius Violin Concerto on RCA hybrid SACD and can heartily recommend it: the sound is excellent, the performance is the best one ever, and at mid-price the disc includes the Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 2 and the Glazunov Violin Concerto, all prime mature Heifetz (1959-1963). A great disc on all counts.
I've listened to two more:

Brahms & Tchaikovsky Violin Concertos - Heifetz / CSO / Reiner. Excellent, performance and sound. Dynamic and detailed, yet warm and oh so listenable.

Rachmaninov / Prokofiev 3rd Piano Concertos - Van Cliburn / CSO / Reiner. Also excellent, however, the Rachmaninov is a live recording and someone in the audience coughed all the way through it. A shame.