If there’s a piece of music for which German record label Tacet’s approach to minimizing the problem of inner groove distortion makes a lot of sense, that’s this one. Maurice Ravel’s “Boléro” (1928) is a single-movement orchestral work with an extremely wide dynamic range that goes from VERY quiet to VERY loud during its 16+ minutes of duration in a very gradual and controlled manner. This makes it a very demanding piece for the orchestra, particularly for the snare drum player, who plays non-stop from the very beginning to the very end.

Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Carlo Rizzi. Recorded and released in 2012.

Numark TTXUSB turntable – Nagaoka MP-500 phono cartridge – ART DJPRE II phono stage preamp – Vinyl record vinilo LP