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I have the Debussy La mer and Nocturnes coupling in an EMI Classics Great Recordings of the Century release (though with different reduced artwork to that on ferney's LP), digitally remastered in 1999, but issued as DEBUSSY NIPPER 1: promotional use -- not for resale. I think it might have come with Gramophone (rather than BBCMM) when the GRotC series was launched, but cannot be sure.
I have the Debussy La mer and Nocturnes coupling in an EMI Classics Great Recordings of the Century release (though with different reduced artwork to that on ferney's LP), digitally remastered in 1999, but issued as DEBUSSY NIPPER 1: promotional use -- not for resale. I think it might have come with Gramophone (rather than BBCMM) when the GRotC series was launched, but cannot be sure.
I have the Debussy La mer and Nocturnes coupling in an EMI Classics Great Recordings of the Century release (though with different reduced artwork to that on ferney's LP), digitally remastered in 1999, but issued as DEBUSSY NIPPER 1: promotional use -- not for resale. I think it might have come with Gramophone (rather than BBCMM) when the GRotC series was launched, but cannot be sure.
That's the very same one I have. Given to me in HMV Oxford Street years ago as I made a purchase (a small one at that!). Very discreetly with the words almost whispered by the assistant "We only give them to our regular customers" Those were indeed, the days
Is this different from the 2004 EMI ART reissue (with a small picture of the original LP image on the front), which I find lacking in sound quality? Does it have a beach sunset on the cover? There now seems to be a hybrid SACD on Amazon.
Yes, it is different - with just La Mer & Nocturnes (no c/w), and it does have the sunset with the wet, burnished black and gold beach and the seagulls overhead, which I always took to be the original LP cover (as with all Toshiba CDs) - Not the World Records etc. one which has an a red sun over the full tide.
The EMI Concert Classics with the Pebbles cover was a reissue - the Toshiba art may come from the SAX2463 (***) one mentioned here as "rare" https://kingswayhallclassics.com/pro...sxlp-30146-760 and, remarkably, I can't find a single image of it online anywhere. True limited editions... and then along came SACD, SHMCD etc. just to complicate things. (HQCD was the later designation for those Toshibas, and was retained after Warners took over.)
It's TOCE 13205, one of the earliest of Okazaki's classic 13000 series. I never had the EMI GROC, but whenever I compared other such issues to Toshibas of the same recordings the Toshiba was superior in depth, space, detail and dynamics. Every time. (If not always by a vast amount - and the Testament issues were often very close to the Toshibas, e.g. the Cluytens Roussel 3&4; just a little more interventionist in excising noise or tonal roughness, at the expense of some insight & presence).
The Toshibas can be a bit warts-and-all and sometimes transferred at a very high level, but the only one ever to truly disappoint me was a Giulini Stravinsky CD of Petrushka/Firebird in Chicago, where the dynamic compression was preserved all too faithfully!
(But they were still cheap then, Customs didn't always jump on you & sending it back to Tokyo was scarcely an option... )
*
EDIT(***) Turns out it isn't this one either... SAX2463 is the strange shadowy figure which features in miniature in the EMI GROC...
It's TOCE 13205, one of the earliest of Okazaki's classic 13000 series. I never had the EMI GROC, but whenever I compared other such issues to Toshibas of the same recordings the Toshiba was superior in depth, space, detail and dynamics. Every time.
Thanks Jayne - I will look out for it. It's listed but n/a on the CDJapan website, where it qualifies for "The Ultimate Orchestra Super Classic Thorough Anatomy" - Google Translation.
The shadowy figure is Seurat's drawing "The Veil" of 1882.
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