Video Contest
Have some fun with us and participate in our Chopin video contest. To participate you need to make a video of yourself or you and friends playing any Chopin piece. Not just the piano works but also any of the songs or chamber works.
The contest is being patronised and judged by Alice Sara Ott, Deutsche Grammophon’s recently signed pianist. The winner receives two concert tickets to a concert by Alice Sara Ott on June, 3rd 2010 in Dresden (Germany) and includes travel expenses. You will of course be able to meet her as well!
All the videos are gathered in a gallery. Just make sure you can be seen actually playing! Copy the video onto your computer and upload it into the contest section on Alice Sara Ott’s Facebook page. You will need to be or become a member of Facebook to enter the competition.
The deadline for entries is 30 April, 2010!
Good luck, but above all, let’s have a little fun together!
your Web Team
Deutsche Grammophon . Decca
www.deutschegrammophon.com . www.deccaclassics.com
Friday 19 March 2010
Tuesday 16 March 2010
Out-of-Prints
www.200chopin.com
The wonderful thing about selling downloads via the internet is that the by no means small effort required to bring an out-of-print album back into the catalogue as a download is one-time only. This effort involves locating the master and transferring it to the correct digital format, locating the original LP cover and having it scanned, and checking the recording information before having the album catalogued into the database.
For Chopin Year, for the first time Deutsche Grammophon will be offering for download titles taken direct from analogue masters, i.e. LP albums that have never been on released CD at all. Other recordings have been available on CD only in certain territories.
One angle is that we are expanding the historical picture in Chopin year by making available more recordings by Polish pianists and in particular Warsaw Chopin Competition winners such as Halina Czerny-Stefanska (1949), Adam Harasiewicz (1955), Dang Thai Son (1980 - the year when a scandal was created because Ivo Pogorelich was not admitted to the final round), and Stanislav Bunin (1985).
Further, we are reissuing the two remaining LP albums of the distinguished Polish pianist Stefan Askenase - a teacher of Martha Argerich - that were not already included in the Original Masters box devoted to him. These are the complete Waltzes plus the Concerto No.2 and two Polonaises, both in stereo. The Original Masters box contained earlier analogue recordings.
The earliest recording on our programme is a transfer from shellacs of Alexander Brailowsky playing Chopin’s First Piano Concerto played by the Berlin Philharmonic and conducted by Julius Prüwer in 1928.
We also intend to re-release as downloads three American Decca LPs of the American pianist Ruth Slenczynska (born 1925) performing Chopin’s complete Etudes, Scherzos and Impromptus. She is the first American woman pianist in history to celebrate over 70 years of professional music-making.
your Web Team
Deutsche Grammophon . Decca
www.deutschegrammophon.com . www.deccaclassics.com
The wonderful thing about selling downloads via the internet is that the by no means small effort required to bring an out-of-print album back into the catalogue as a download is one-time only. This effort involves locating the master and transferring it to the correct digital format, locating the original LP cover and having it scanned, and checking the recording information before having the album catalogued into the database.
For Chopin Year, for the first time Deutsche Grammophon will be offering for download titles taken direct from analogue masters, i.e. LP albums that have never been on released CD at all. Other recordings have been available on CD only in certain territories.
One angle is that we are expanding the historical picture in Chopin year by making available more recordings by Polish pianists and in particular Warsaw Chopin Competition winners such as Halina Czerny-Stefanska (1949), Adam Harasiewicz (1955), Dang Thai Son (1980 - the year when a scandal was created because Ivo Pogorelich was not admitted to the final round), and Stanislav Bunin (1985).
Further, we are reissuing the two remaining LP albums of the distinguished Polish pianist Stefan Askenase - a teacher of Martha Argerich - that were not already included in the Original Masters box devoted to him. These are the complete Waltzes plus the Concerto No.2 and two Polonaises, both in stereo. The Original Masters box contained earlier analogue recordings.
The earliest recording on our programme is a transfer from shellacs of Alexander Brailowsky playing Chopin’s First Piano Concerto played by the Berlin Philharmonic and conducted by Julius Prüwer in 1928.
We also intend to re-release as downloads three American Decca LPs of the American pianist Ruth Slenczynska (born 1925) performing Chopin’s complete Etudes, Scherzos and Impromptus. She is the first American woman pianist in history to celebrate over 70 years of professional music-making.
your Web Team
Deutsche Grammophon . Decca
www.deutschegrammophon.com . www.deccaclassics.com
Saturday 13 March 2010
Comparing different artists’ recordings of the same pieces
www.200chopin.com
Chopin was himself a fine pianist and one of the relatively few great composers (Rachmaninov was another) who performed their own compositions in concert. If he had lived during the 2nd half of the 20th century and into the 21st, Chopin’s recordings of his own compositions would no doubt have become irrevocably associated with himself just as with many modern pop artists performing their own music or music composed specifically for them.
Instead, over the last 60 years, professional pianists have flocked to record Chopin’s works. Deutsche Grammophon and Decca made a great many of these recordings, successfully signing many of the most famous pianists of our time. The result is a rich and deep Chopin catalogue and a diversity in the interpretations that is breathtaking.
Our site offers the user to listen for free to full-track streams of this catalogue. Above all the site is being structured to allow the user to listen to and compare all these different interpretations of all Chopin’s works.
As we mentioned in the previous post, we are inviting users to take their time and live with the different interpretations a while, before making their choice of what to keep and buy. Wherever the user is in the site listening to a track, a special functionality can be called upon to view and listen to other artists’ versions of this track, without the user losing his place in the site.
Our next post will look at our efforts to offer as complete a catalogue as we can of Deutsche Grammophon and Decca’s Chopin recordings, detailing some of the highlights of the recordings we are bringing back to the catalogue for the first time since the LP era.
your Web Team
Deutsche Grammophon . Decca
www.deutschegrammophon.com . www.deccaclassics.com
Chopin was himself a fine pianist and one of the relatively few great composers (Rachmaninov was another) who performed their own compositions in concert. If he had lived during the 2nd half of the 20th century and into the 21st, Chopin’s recordings of his own compositions would no doubt have become irrevocably associated with himself just as with many modern pop artists performing their own music or music composed specifically for them.
Instead, over the last 60 years, professional pianists have flocked to record Chopin’s works. Deutsche Grammophon and Decca made a great many of these recordings, successfully signing many of the most famous pianists of our time. The result is a rich and deep Chopin catalogue and a diversity in the interpretations that is breathtaking.
Our site offers the user to listen for free to full-track streams of this catalogue. Above all the site is being structured to allow the user to listen to and compare all these different interpretations of all Chopin’s works.
As we mentioned in the previous post, we are inviting users to take their time and live with the different interpretations a while, before making their choice of what to keep and buy. Wherever the user is in the site listening to a track, a special functionality can be called upon to view and listen to other artists’ versions of this track, without the user losing his place in the site.
Our next post will look at our efforts to offer as complete a catalogue as we can of Deutsche Grammophon and Decca’s Chopin recordings, detailing some of the highlights of the recordings we are bringing back to the catalogue for the first time since the LP era.
your Web Team
Deutsche Grammophon . Decca
www.deutschegrammophon.com . www.deccaclassics.com
Thursday 11 March 2010
Opening Doors
www.200chopin.com
One central conceptual challenge that we are addressing with this site is how to make the world of Chopin attractive to those willing to take some time to explore. We believe there will be many who would like to do this. While many will agree that Chopin was only equalled by Mozart in his output of beautiful melodies, so many of Chopin's works are uninspiringly titled in the dry language of archival categorisation.
Where does one begin? “Etude in E major op.10, no.3” – not only is such a title impossible for most people to use as a way of remembering the famous tune that lies behind it, it is also wholely uninviting to the above mentioned explorers looking for a door to enter into the world of Chopin.
Humans are herd animals and we are interested in other people’s opinions. This site will gather all sorts of different people’s opinions of Chopin’s works in general and our artists’ recordings of them too. At the level of an individual piece, we will open up all recordings by our artists to users to rate, creating a ranked and continually changeing catalogue of users’ choices. At a broader level, we will welcome users to make multiple playlists, gathering personal favourites and ordering them under themes. If many users take advantage of this feature, diversity will be assured.
Should the titling of other users’ playlists not be enough to entice a user to try out some of those tracks, the “Celebrity Playlist” section will be another option. Here we are inviting our own artists as well as some well-known public figures, most likely from the music world, to list some of their favourite Chopin works and above all to explain why.
Today we received a few thoughts from Yuja Wang, Deutsche Grammophon’s recently signed pianist. Amongst other choices she drew attention to the Mazurkas, since this genre in particular provides an intimate glimpse of the polish roots of the composer’s soul. Many would agree with that statement and yet the fact that the mazurkas do not belong to the more approachable of Chopin’s works on first listen means that it requires an insight from a person of such obvious credibility as Yuja Wang to entice the explorer to try one out and to give the work a chance to grow on him with repeated listening.
In our site, we will give users the time to let works grow on them. There will be no pressure to make snap decisions on purchases but the opportunity to build up a basket of recordings to buy over several weeks.
Our next post will take a look at another central concept of the site – how we are handling the presentation of so many recordings by our artists of the same works.
your Web Team
Deutsche Grammophon . Decca
www.deutschegrammophon.com . www.deccaclassics.com
One central conceptual challenge that we are addressing with this site is how to make the world of Chopin attractive to those willing to take some time to explore. We believe there will be many who would like to do this. While many will agree that Chopin was only equalled by Mozart in his output of beautiful melodies, so many of Chopin's works are uninspiringly titled in the dry language of archival categorisation.
Where does one begin? “Etude in E major op.10, no.3” – not only is such a title impossible for most people to use as a way of remembering the famous tune that lies behind it, it is also wholely uninviting to the above mentioned explorers looking for a door to enter into the world of Chopin.
Humans are herd animals and we are interested in other people’s opinions. This site will gather all sorts of different people’s opinions of Chopin’s works in general and our artists’ recordings of them too. At the level of an individual piece, we will open up all recordings by our artists to users to rate, creating a ranked and continually changeing catalogue of users’ choices. At a broader level, we will welcome users to make multiple playlists, gathering personal favourites and ordering them under themes. If many users take advantage of this feature, diversity will be assured.
Should the titling of other users’ playlists not be enough to entice a user to try out some of those tracks, the “Celebrity Playlist” section will be another option. Here we are inviting our own artists as well as some well-known public figures, most likely from the music world, to list some of their favourite Chopin works and above all to explain why.
Today we received a few thoughts from Yuja Wang, Deutsche Grammophon’s recently signed pianist. Amongst other choices she drew attention to the Mazurkas, since this genre in particular provides an intimate glimpse of the polish roots of the composer’s soul. Many would agree with that statement and yet the fact that the mazurkas do not belong to the more approachable of Chopin’s works on first listen means that it requires an insight from a person of such obvious credibility as Yuja Wang to entice the explorer to try one out and to give the work a chance to grow on him with repeated listening.
In our site, we will give users the time to let works grow on them. There will be no pressure to make snap decisions on purchases but the opportunity to build up a basket of recordings to buy over several weeks.
Our next post will take a look at another central concept of the site – how we are handling the presentation of so many recordings by our artists of the same works.
your Web Team
Deutsche Grammophon . Decca
www.deutschegrammophon.com . www.deccaclassics.com
Tuesday 9 March 2010
Listen, Compare & Participate
www.200chopin.com
Four years on from the Mozart 250th birthday anniversary in 2006 we celebrate the 200th anniversary of Chopin’s birth in 2010. Though different in the scale of their output, Chopin can be compared to Mozart as one of the finest and most prolific composer of tunes.
But can you name them like you can many of Mozart’s. It’s difficult because they don’t have names as many of Mozart’s operatic arias did. With a few notable exceptions, many of Chopin’s gorgeous tunes slumber in the relative anonymity of the classification by genre – polonaise, mazurka, waltz and so on. A number in a filing cabinet.
Four years on from Mozart year 2006 two developments in particular in the way users interact with the internet allow us to surface all these tunes. The first is the explosion of social interaction and user-generated content. The second is the new experimental climate around gratis full track streaming. Our coming Chopin site, making full use of these developments, will run under the motto: “Listen, Compare & Participate.”
That motto is the subject of our next blog in a couple of days.
your web team
Deutsche Grammophon.Decca
www.deutschegrammophon.com . www.deccaclassics.com
Four years on from the Mozart 250th birthday anniversary in 2006 we celebrate the 200th anniversary of Chopin’s birth in 2010. Though different in the scale of their output, Chopin can be compared to Mozart as one of the finest and most prolific composer of tunes.
But can you name them like you can many of Mozart’s. It’s difficult because they don’t have names as many of Mozart’s operatic arias did. With a few notable exceptions, many of Chopin’s gorgeous tunes slumber in the relative anonymity of the classification by genre – polonaise, mazurka, waltz and so on. A number in a filing cabinet.
Four years on from Mozart year 2006 two developments in particular in the way users interact with the internet allow us to surface all these tunes. The first is the explosion of social interaction and user-generated content. The second is the new experimental climate around gratis full track streaming. Our coming Chopin site, making full use of these developments, will run under the motto: “Listen, Compare & Participate.”
That motto is the subject of our next blog in a couple of days.
your web team
Deutsche Grammophon.Decca
www.deutschegrammophon.com . www.deccaclassics.com
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