André Previn had been principle conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra for over ten years by the time he completed the recording of Boléro on this record, the longest tenure with the LSO of any single conductor. During that time, he raised the profile of both the orchestra and himself with UK television appearances on such popular programmes as Morecambe and Wise and on his own André Previn’s Music Night where he introduced classical music to a mass UK audience (the LP version is on HIQLP011). His recorded legacy with the LSO belongs to that golden decade of analogue recordings, mainly for EMI, which included the kind of repertoire in which Previn excels, such as Russian Romantics like Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev as well as British composers like Walton and Britten but his versatility is also reflected in repertoire as diverse as Debussy and Haydn.
Recorded on 26 June 1979 (Boléro) at the Kingsway Hall, London and 14 July 1978, No.1 Studio, Abbey Road, London. Produced and engineered respectively by the legendary team of Christopher Bishop and Christopher Parker.
Cut at Abbey Road Studios from the original stereo analogue master tapes with the Neumann VMS82 lathe fed an analogue pre-cut signal from a specially adapted Studer A80 tape deck with additional ‘advance’ playback head, making the cut a totally analogue process.

Pressed on 180g vinyl to audiophile standards

Featuring the original album artwork

In the original 1980 review Ivan March of the GRAMOPHONE wrote:
“A first class coupling in every way. The recording is splendid. Bolero is given a whole side to itself and the climax is superbly caught, full and clear… The record was made in the Kingsway Hall and its unique acoustic is even more impressively demonstrated in the Daphnis and Chloe suite, a highly distinguished performance in every way… The recording throughout shows that analogue techniques can still offer the most sophisticated detail, without loss of colour and richness of texture.”