Deryk Barker recalled:

>...the World Record Club, which was a subsidiary of EMI.  Mind you
>they did some good work, reissuing otherwise unavailable EMI material: I
>still have my WRC LPs of, inter alia, Schnabel's Brahms Second Concerto,
>Casals' Elgar Concerto and Stokwoski's Shostakovich 11.

Colin Davis's first record, IIRC, appeared on that label - Mozart 34 and
Oboe Concerto with Leon Goossens.

The Australian World Record Club operated between the early 60s and the
mid-80s, and for a modest sum per LP was able to more than satisfy my
raging addiction for music.  They used a lot of EMI material, but also
had access to a wide variety of CM labels, some of which were difficult
to obtain and were vilely expensive if you could.  Thus, for example, I
was able to buy a fairly large chunk of the Lyrita catalogue at a more
than 50% discount.  They did their own covers which were pretty basic -
much like Naxos - but retained the original notes.  To anyone hungry for
new and unusual music, they were essential and there must be thousands of
Australian and New Zealand CM lovers who remember the organisation very
fondly.

Eventually and inevitably, the club was taken over, has undergone several
name changes and mergers, and is now run by suits who know as much about CM
as I do about snake charming.  I remember a period in its later life when
they'd release, say, a record containing two Haydn symphonies and in the
promotional blurb would carefully tell you the tempo markings for each
movement in the apparent belief that these were the names of the songs on
the LP.  Even the memory makes me shudder.

Richard Pennycuick
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