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
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I am 82 years old, live alone, and somebody has taken most of my Grammophon albums. The one I miss the most has on the cover a necklace of glass balls, in the contents there is, to me the best piece of Chopin music, among others, there is Rosencavalier. Is there a Cd of this album, and how do I go to buy it.
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for your kind attention to
my request.
Yours truly, Mario Varese-Donada
Please, when do I get a reply to my request of march 19, 2010?
ReplyDeletemavarese2000@yahoo.com
mavarese2000@gmail,com
Hello! Yes, I wonder if anyone is looking at our comments (see above) but I'll say my piece anyway. I think it's fantastic that for this Chopin year DG will at last 'be offering for download titles taken direct from analogue masters', though I can't understand why it's taken you so long to start.
ReplyDeleteIn case you think I'm only going to criticize you: we music-lovers and record-collectors must congratulate you on what you've done so far - you're the ONLY 'major' which has a remotely serious website. In fact, it's superb (some minor irritations aside) - but also frustrating, because it shows such an obvious way forward for the reissues side of your business, which you yet seem strangely reluctant to embrace.
Surely, with broadband internet access more and more ubiquitous and ever cheaper, downloads are THE way - possibly the ONLY way - to market niche, specialist and historical reissues? Compared to guessing how many individuals in Iceland, Argentina, Scotland or Madeira might buy a CD reissue of a now obscure pianist playing Chopin or Eimert's electronic etudes, and compared to the costs of compiling, mastering, pressing, packaging, warehousing, marketing, shipping and then dumping unsold CDs (which nobody has bought because DG's local press offices don't know how to market them, so the mainstream music press never mentions or reviews them and shops don't stock or promote them), digitizing an analogue LP or 78 master (which you have to do anyway, for preservation purposes - otherwise you might as well throw them all away, right?), batch-converting it to FLAC (no more .mp3s, please! You're a serious, grown-up record company with audiophile pretensions, not a teenage garage pop label) and doing a little tagging is pretty cheap, painless and win-win.
Right, on to your choice of Chopin players! Czerny-Stefanska, Harasiewicz, Dang Thai Son, Bunin, more Askenase, Brailowsky, Slenczynska - fantastic, I can't wait to hear them all! But here's the real advantage of the internet: you don't HAVE to choose. Digitize ALL your Chopin (again, you have to, right? Otherwise you're effectively admitting you have no intention of exploiting these recordings again, at which point you should deposit them in a national library) and let US choose which ones we buy. Ciani, Leimer, Leroux - three other Chopin players from your back-catalogue I'd like to hear (I haven't researched this thoroughly yet but my experience is that not all forgotten recordings are forgotten for good artistic reasons). There was I believe a complete edition of Ciani's DG recordings - but issued only in Italy. Bingo! The internet makes that irrelevant.
Come on, you know it makes sense!
Best wishes, Nick