This is the sound we wanted to listen to! Mravinsky's immortal masterpiece still shines even half a century since it was recorded. The Leningrad Philharmonic's ironclad ensemble explodes!

In terms of both sound and performance, this recording boasts the highest quality of all Mravinsky-Leningrad Philharmonic recordings, and has been remastered by Esoteric Mastering and is now available on vinyl record. Recorded at Grosser-Saal, Musikverein, Wien on November 9, 1960.

Producing the analog vinyl records under the best avilable condition

The analog vinyl records of the "Masterpiece Collection" have been reissued by re-mastering the original master tapes, exclusive for the vinyl records. The mastering process employs the newly established "Esoteric Mastering" system, including ESOTERIC's top-of-the-line equipment "Master Sound Discrete DAC" and "Master Sound Discrete Clock." In addition, the MEXCEL cables are sparingly employed to achieve flawless high quality sound as the master data.

The Analog cutting process has been performed at MIXER'S LAB in Tokyo employing the Neumann VMS80 cutting lathe, a famous machine manufactured in West Germany in the golden era of the analog audio, of which only two remain in Japan.

The "Esoteric Mastering" equipment is also employed to send out master data for analog cutting machine. Collaborating with the MIXER'S LAB, the "Esoteric Mastering" equipment was brought into their cutting room and connected the output directly to the Neumann SP79C cutting console. The "Esoteric Mastering" sound is sent directly to the cutting process bypassing the equalizer section of the console. The cutting process is performed by Mr. Katsutoshi Kitamura, a cutting engineer at MIXER'S LAB, and he put his master craftsman skills into the master disc.

Analog Cutting Equipment:

- Cutting Lathe: Neumann VMS80

- Cutting Console: Neumann SP79C

- Cutter Amp: Neumann SAL74B

- Cutter Head: Neumann SX74

Today, it is rare to cut a lacquer disc just for audition purposes, only master discs are cut for record pressing. However, in order to pursue sound quality, ESOTERIC created a number of lacquer discs with different transmission methods to the console.

Those lacquer discs created were taken back to the ESOTERIC Mastering Center to be auditioned and sound quality checked on ESOTERIC's Grandioso T1 analog turntable to determine the best transmission method.

This is how Esoteric created vinyl records extending the information contained in the original master tape ,with a focus on the analog sound.

Re-mastering
Producer: Motoaki Ohmachi ( ESOTERIC COMPANY )
Associated Producer: Jo Yoshida ( ESOTERIC COMPANY )
Mastering Engineer: Masaya Tohno ( ESOTERIC COMPANY )
Cutting Engineer: Katsutoshi Kitamura ( MIXER'S LAB )