Vinyl from behind an "Iron Curtain"

R

robnec

Well-Known Member
Hello. I dropped to a local thrift store and get a Russian Melodia Heandel's Cocertti Grossi. The quality of performance and vinyl itself is stellar. I have also a few Eterna recordings and they are great too. I think that we have lost a great amount of music and records because of politics and I do not see a way to get it back ever. Robert.
PS. I am from Poland and still remember going to Eastern Germany or Russian culture institutes trying to hunt /we did not shop in those times but hunt for goods/ some new vinyl. Robert.
 
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I agree, there are many great LP records from the 60's,70's and 80's from Russia and Eastern Europe, like Melodiya, Supraphon, Hungarotron, etc. I've got a few hundreds of them and generally speaking range from very good to excellent. The vinyl quality itself was very good, with very little or none surface noise.
 
I don't have any Russian LP's but a couple months ago I was at the GW, and since the CD's were on sale for a buck, I pick up what looked like Russian Techno. About 5 of them.... Can't read a word on the covers, but it's actually some really great techno and electronica.. I'd say on the lines and par with good German electro... great hardcore stuff, and the quality of the recordings seem to be a lot better than what you get here in the states..
 
Actually classical records made by Melodia were great!
However when they did some licensed pop or rock stuff it was usually mediocre at best.
I guess it was their (Communist party) way to show us that modern Western music sucked!
Didn't work with me....
 
Combloc consumer goods of almost any/every type were almost non-existant here in America. I would LOVE to have a Russian radio, but they go too high for me, & then there's the very real problem & cost of shipping.
 
Hello. Supraphon and Hungarton were using good vinyl but they were lesser quality performance wise. They usually were using local orchestras and conductors with no world class. On Melodia records one have a chance to hear many great musicians at the dawn of their development. Robert.
 
robnec said:
Hello. Supraphon and Hungarton were using good vinyl but they were lesser quality performance wise. They usually were using local orchestras and conductors with no world class. On Melodia records one have a chance to hear many great musicians at the dawn of their development. Robert.
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Hi Robert: this is of course debatable. My opinion is that the Czech Philharmonic was (and is today) a first class orchestra. Other orchestras, like the Brno Philharmonic or the Budapest Philharmonic were not at the same level, in my opinion. But the same happened in Russia, were the Leningrad Philharmonic was one of the world´s top orchestras, and the Moscow Radio Orchestra was no match for it. The musical tradition of excellence in Prague goes back to the days of Mozart, and he wrote his symphony No 38 to pay tribute to the virtuosity of the local opera orchestra (characterized by virtuoso woodwind playing).
 
guiller said:
Hi Robert: this is of course debatable. My opinion is that the Czech Philharmonic was (and is today) a first class orchestra. Other orchestras, like the Brno Philharmonic or the Budapest Philharmonic were not at the same level, in my opinion. But the same happened in Russia, were the Leningrad Philharmonic was one of the world´s top orchestras, and the Moscow Radio Orchestra was no match for it. The musical tradition of excellence in Prague goes back to the days of Mozart, and he wrote his symphony No 38 to pay tribute to the virtuosity of the local opera orchestra (characterized by virtuoso woodwind playing).
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Agreed. Not to mention all those crazy Russian virtuosos who recorded with their national labels in their prime.
 
Hello. It is all relative. You have to admit that Igor Oistrah is known better than Josef Suk. I know well that classical music was ok for ruling political forces and in general level of performances was high. In Poland too. Also all concert were easily accessible for public for almost free. Tickets prices were rediculous for Western standards. I have to admit with a shame to buying tickets to National Opera just to have a beer with friends in the buffet. Robert.
 
I'm Hungarian, and so I have a fair collection of combloc lps. There are some real hidden gems to be had! To me it seems a major problem when buying these lps is the condition. Very few people had decent turntables, and so a lot of records are really worn out without any visible sign.

As for their quality, most music that was recorded locally sounds every bit as good as western records to me. It's the reissues of western lps that are more problematic.

Some albums worth listening to:

Syrius: Devil's Masquarade - Very interesting jazz rock, pretty obscure even locally.

Cseh Tamás (eastern name order) A fantastic singer-songwriter, his music is quite unique, might not translate well to non hungarian listeners.

SBB - Polish prog rock band, sort of the Pink Floyd of the east, in a good way. Highly recommended!

Czesław Niemen, a psychedelic-progressive rock artist is also worth checking out.

There are of course others, and sometimes the best stuff is hard tohunt down, as a lot of the more innovative rock musicians were frowned upon by the government.

As for classical: I have 100+ classicallps laying around,but I'm not really into classical. Classical prices are so low over here that it's not even worth selling. Maybe we should start exporting our russian records. :scratch2:
 
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kope_hun said:
I'm Hungarian
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Jó napot kivanok. I studied abroad at the Műegyetem in Budapest.

This is one of my favorite records:

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There was a whole popular music scene the Western world missed out on during the cold war.
 
Soviet records

RevMen said:
Jó napot kivanok. I studied abroad at the Műegyetem in Budapest.

This is one of my favorite records:

7862594aa353728f33ae1f3b91536ad8a454629.jpg


There was a whole popular music scene the Western world missed out on during the cold war.
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Which has nothing to do with Hungary :D
Let me tell you: Vladimir Vysotsky wasn't much of a singer. But if you don't speak Russian you can't (unfortunately) really appreciate his songs.
 
I hit up a garage sale about a month ago, and there were a couple of boxes of mostly classical lps. I came away with about 25 of them, mostly Czech pressings. I had to get the woman to translate the covers on some of them. She also had a puzzled look on her face, and asked me what I was going to do with them. She was surprised that I had a working table, and that I actually liked classical.
I've been happy with the ones I've played so far. And they were very well cared for. Amazing, considering how far they traveled.
 
kope_hun said:
Maybe we should start exporting our russian records. :scratch2:
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This happened already: in the 90's, many Russian immigrants moved into Argentina, bringing in their LP collections, including many classical music titles. Eventually, they decided to sell some of them. The local market of used LPs has now a fair share of those Eastern Europe LPs. Every weekend I go LP hunting and get 4 or 5 Eastern European Lps.
 
So far most Melodiya records i have, have been suffering from high surface noise, probably from damage. I'm not so keen on their sound quality, either; for example one of them has a strong channel imbalance.

I agree that the performances are generally excellent (and exciting). The miking is also usually good.
 
I have found some old London presses of the Leningrad orchestra recordings at garage sales. They are worth saving, if not collecting. One day, these will be sought out by musicians who want to know how the works were interpreted in previous centuries.
 
guiller said:
This happened already: in the 90's, many Russian immigrants moved into Argentina, bringing in their LP collections, including many classical music titles. Eventually, they decided to sell some of them. The local market of used LPs has now a fair share of those Eastern Europe LPs. Every weekend I go LP hunting and get 4 or 5 Eastern European Lps.
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Lucky you.
 
Don't forget that EMI licensed a number of Russian Melodiya recordings in the 1970s and issued them in the U.S. as Melodiya/Angel LPs. The pressing quality on these could be variable, as it was on all Angels during that period, but the performances were first-rate. The recorded sound was generally very good, too.
 
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