You buy a compilation like this for one reason, and it has nothing to do with the music.
It has to do with the way a triangle rings in the left channel during the quiet moment in the third movement. It has to do with the fact that you can hear the hall. You buy Tutti! II because you want to sit your friend down, say nothing, and watch her face change when the full brass section hits at the end of the first track. That is why Reference Recordings made it. That is why it still matters.
The “Tutti!” series was never a greatest-hits package in the normal sense. It was a catalog demonstration, a sampler designed to show off what the label’s engineers could do with a microphone, a tape machine, and a decent hall. Tutti! I came out in 1992 and became the de facto reference disc for stereo dealers and hi-fi nerds across America. Tutti! II, from 1999, did the same thing with a different set of material. Same philosophy: no compression, minimal processing, natural space preserved.
The Sound
You can hear the room. That is the first thing. Not a dead studio padded into submission, not a fake reverb slapped on in post. A room — with air, with depth, with a real acoustic. Reference Recordings used a proprietary process called HDCD (High Definition Compatible Digital) that squeezed more dynamic range out of 16-bit CDs. Some people argued it was marketing. Others, myself included, heard it as a genuine improvement. The quiet passages stayed quiet. The loud ones hit harder. The space between the notes had texture.
The second thing you notice is the balance. These are not close-miked recordings where the French horn sounds like it is sitting in your lap. The orchestra is out there, in front of you, three-dimensional. The brass does not blast in your face; it opens up across the soundstage. The timpani has weight but not mud. The strings breathe.
The Music
The track list is a calculated mix of familiar repertoire and lesser-known pieces designed to show off different orchestral textures. You get the “Dance of the Tumblers” from Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snow Maiden, a piece that moves fast and demands articulation. You get a movement from Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 — the famous Adagietto — for the strings, for the long line, for the way the harp decays.
The real crowd-pleaser is the “Russian Easter Overture” from Rimsky-Korsakov. It has the brass fanfares, the bells, the full, open-ended climax that makes you turn the volume up two clicks and then immediately turn it down because it is too good and too loud. The engineers captured that without distortion. That is the point.
My personal favorite here is the “Symphonic Dances” from Rachmaninoff. The piece already has everything: dark low strings, saxophone, a waltz that feels like falling. On this recording, the timpani strokes sound like they were dug out of the floor. You can feel the air move.
What It Is Not
It is not a replacement for a live concert. It is not art pretending to be cold technology. It is a demonstration of what the medium can do when you respect it. Reference Recordings made these samplers because they believed that high fidelity was not a gimmick — it was a way of hearing the music the way the musicians heard it.
Tutti! II still holds up. The HDCD process is obsolete now, but the recordings themselves are not. You can play this on any decent system — even an old one — and hear the difference. You hear the air. You hear the space. You hear the reason people still argue about microphones.
If you have never heard it, or if you pulled it out of a bargain bin because the cover looked medical, put it on. Volume to taste. Do not skip tracks. Do not talk. Just listen.