This fascinating, albeit rather long, article appeared in the London
Financial Times this morning.  I think it is of interest to the List.

   Raiders of the lost tapes

   Record labels are cashing in on archive material that will create a
   collector's paradise, says Andrew Clark.

   When Michael Fine, vice-president of Deutsche Grammophon, visits La
   Scala, Milan, next week, he will not be applauding the singers on
   stage.  Instead, he wants to lock himself in a back room, and listen
   to voices from the past.

   Since the war, unknown to the outside world, La Scala has been taping
   performances which now represent a legendary era.  Deutsche Grammophon
   has bought the rights to sell these recordings commercially.  Their
   importance lies not just in capturing artists like Callas, Corelli
   and Tebaldi at the height of their powers, but in providing a record
   of unrepeatable events, such as Carlos Kleiber conducting Otello.

   Fine admits he is salivating at the prospect, and says record collectors
   are likely to react the same way.  The success of the project hinges
   on the quality of La Scala's tapes and the thorny business of
   negotiating royalties.

   While Fine buries himself in La Scala's past, another DG executive,
   Christian Gansch, will be scouring European radio stations for tapes
   featuring Sergiu Celibidache.  The great Romanian conductor, who died
   in 1996, scorned the recording process but gave a series of electrifying
   concerts with radio orchestras in the 1960s and 1970s.  DG believes
   these provide a more truthful record of Celibidache's art than the
   CDs recently released by EMI, which capture him in his dotage with
   the Munich Philharmonic.

   If you combine these two projects with DG's 63-CD centenary edition,
   you could be forgiven for thinking "the yellow label" had overdosed
   on nostalgia.  In fact, most record companies are doing the same.
   This was, after all, the century of the gramophone.  It's only natural
   that the music industry should indulge in some fin-de-siecle
   stock-taking.

   Behind the nostalgia lies an unavoidable commercial logic.  Until
   recently, record companies had little incentive to focus on performers
   of the past - with a few obvious exceptions like Callas.  This is no
   longer the case.  What is new is that:

   Thanks to the saturation of the CD market, dinosaurs of the classical
   record industry like DG and Sony no longer view new recordings as a
   long-term investment.  Unlike the past, when big-sellers helped to
   subsidise slow-burners, every new CD now has to pay its way.  The
   market for new recordings is likely to remain stagnant until someone
   invents another Three Tenors phenomenon or a replacement for CD
   technology.  In the meantime, record companies are trying to unlock
   the value of their back catalogue.

   There is mounting recognition that technical improvements in performance
   and recording over the past 50 years have coincided with a decline
   in the depth of musical interpretation.  Today's performances lack
   the psycho-emotional force generated by artists of previous generations,
   who were closer to the world of the great classical composers.

   Radio stations and music organisations have begun to realise the
   commercial potential of their archives, which are full of ready-made
   tapes of legendary performers.  Some, like the BBC and New York
   Philharmonic, have set up their own record labels.  This coincides
   with a shift in the taste of record-buyers towards live recordings,
   which have more spontaneity and atmosphere than studio performances.

   The sound quality of material falling out of copyright has become
   extremely acceptable, as it catches up with the early LP era.  With
   the help of modern technology, small independent labels can shamelessly
   exploit this, by poaching the established labels' most valuable
   treasures.  Meanwhile, the entry of the budget Naxos label into the
   "historical" market, using non-copyright broadcast recordings, has
   exposed a wider public to the style and importance of great interpreters
   of the past.

   Raiding the past, for unpublished tapes or a repackaged back catalogue,
   has become big business.  In the five years since Philips launched
   its Duo label, it has sold 10 million CDs.  The New York Philharmonic's
   "historic broadcast" series has notched up 50,000 CDs in a mere 18
   months, and its handsomely documented Mahler edition is likely to do
   even better.  To record an opera in the studio today, a record company
   would expect to invest at least 100,000.  If it buys tapes from a
   radio station or private source, the outlay can be as little as
   20,000.

   All this has created a collector's paradise.  If you are a Karajan
   fan, you can now listen to his Tannhauser, the one Wagner opera he
   never recorded commercially.  If Barbirolli was your preferred Mahler
   conductor, you can thank the BBC for publishing his broadcast
   performance of the Third Symphony.  Some artists always performed
   better "live" than in the studio - which explains the market for
   pirate recordings of Knappertsbusch at Bayreuth.

   In the scramble for archive material, record companies have unearthed
   studio recordings by reputable artists which were never published.
   One such treasure is Clifford Curzon's performances of Mozart piano
   concertos 26 and 27, to be released next month as part of Philips's
   "Great Pianists of the 20th Century".  If a record company cannot
   justify the investment needed to clean up old tapes, it can always
   let others do so under licence: vintage EMI recordings of Beecham
   and Kempe have appeared on the Testament label, produced by some of
   EMI's own staff unencumbered by their employer's overheads.

   Even if you fight shy of the pre-stereo era, standards in the 1960s
   were so good that you are frequently better-off with a cheap reissue
   than a new CD at full price.  DG's latest Rigoletto, for example,
   hardly matches the Decca recording made by Joan Sutherland in her
   prime, now available at mid-price.  And could any studio recording
   match the frisson of Karajan's live Boheme from the Vienna State
   Opera, taped by Austrian Radio in 1963 and now issued by BMG? The
   market has become more sophisticated: people want multiple versions
   of their favourite repertoire, and emotional truthfulness is overtaking
   technical perfection in record-buyers' priorities.

   Not everyone believes the current flood of historical issues is a
   good thing.  Some critics say it only dilutes sales of the existing
   catalogue, ruining the market for new releases.  Others argue that
   no matter how legendary the performance, the sound is sometimes so
   poor as to discourage repeated listening.

   There is also some debate about what qualifies as "historic" or
   "legendary".  Many labels try to bestow classic status on performances
   which are neither venerable nor rare.  In the BBC Legends series,
   for example, there seems to be no compelling reason for including
   Constantin Silvestri's studio performance of Tchaikovsky's Manfred,
   especially when another Silvestri recording of the symphony is
   available.  And it's hard to get excited about any new CD featuring
   Furtwangler or Sviatoslav Richter, because you can be sure the material
   has been issued before.

   That raises the problem of authenticating old tapes: in the absence
   of recording schedules, no one can be certain a "live" performance
   is what the label says it is.  Eight years ago, EMI issued a Beecham
   Tristan from Covent Garden in 1936; it later had to admit that part
   of the recording came from a 1937 performance with a different
   conductor.  BBC Legends says it is drawing on private collectors'
   tapes to fill important gaps in the BBC's archives - but how can it
   be sure the collectors didn't get their notes muddled?

   Some sharks, especially the fly-by-night Italian labels, will slap
   anything on the cover.  The market is swimming in recordings of
   identical performances, often with conflicting information about
   repertoire, venue and date.  That's why the consumer stands to benefit
   from the involvement of well-established companies.  Labels like DG
   and EMI have the resources to select and clean up the best material,
   pay for the rights and distribute widely - narrowing the market for
   "bootleg" performances.  They are all too aware that copyright will
   soon lapse on their golden era: better to make money from it now,
   and serve it up properly, than give open season to pirate labels.

   It's tempting to deduce from all this that we are looking to the past to
   compensate for an artistically barren present.  What we must remember is
   that there are far more performances today than 40 years ago, and the CD
   era has vastly expanded the recorded repertoire.  When we listen to
   legends of the past, we are hearing a filtered version of musical life
   in their day.  The also-rans have not survived.

   Most record companies admit they were spoilt by the CD boom.  It led
   to massive overproduction.  The new interest in "historical" issues
   is helping the industry to consolidate.  Who knows whether or not
   today's stars will graduate into tomorrow's legends? Listening to
   the latest CDs of Gergiev, Kissin and Terfel, there is more than a
   grain of hope.

John G. Deacon
Home page:      http://www.ctv.es/USERS/j.deacon