How My Collection Started

A Reflection, on Wagner's Birthday.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Parsifal that started it all.
Inset photograph © 1985 Bayreuth Festspiele.

It all started with what I wanted for Christmas in 1993.

"Mom, I want the Richard Wagner Edition of Parsifal with James Levine conducting."

"OK." Mom was happy that my classes at Fordham (including The Age of Beethoven and Wagner and Wagnerism the year before had led to such a fruitful musical interest in her only son."

The Mighty Have Fallen

J & R Music World Shuts its Doors. 
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Requesciat in pace: J & R Music World

Last year on Superconductor I ran a story about the dwindling list of brick-and-mortar stores left in New York to buy classical music on CD. Yesterday, we lost another one.

J & R Music (and Computer) World, which started as a basement record story and evolved into a  block-long multi-story music and electronics emporium selling everything from blenders to MacBook Pros has shuttered its doors as of Wednesday. They join a long list of closed music retailers: Virgin MegaStore, Tower Records, HMV and Sam Goody to name just a few.

One Label to Rule Them All

EMI sold to Vivendi: will join Universal Music Group

Endangered Music Industry? The EMI logo. © EMI Music Group.

In a $1.9 billion dollar deal, the troubled EMI Music Group will be sold to Vivendi Universal, making the world's largest record company even bigger. The Red Label will join Deutsche Grammophon and Decca under the Universal umbrella. 

The deal was announced Friday in the New York Times.

There is no word on whether EMI, one of the oldest and most venerable record companies of the 20th century will continue to release music under its own imprint. Current EMI artists include Romanian soprano Angela Gheorghiu, Berlin Philharmonic music director Sir Simon Rattle and pianist Leif Ove Andsnes. Pop artists include Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd and Coldplay.

Universal used to have three major labels, but went to two in an effort to cut costs. The victim then was the Netherlands-based Philips Classics imprint which ceased operations in 1999. Its Dutch recording studios were shuttered. Other consolidations in recent years have included the distribution of Warner Brothers Classics by the Naxos group and the merger of RCA Red Seal with Sony Classical. 

EMI was one of the pioneers in the music industry in the 1950s under the guidance of Walter Legge. They were the first label to sign artists like Herbert von Karajan, Maria Callas, and Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, who later married Mr. Legge. Their vast symphonic and operatic catalogue includes some of the most important recordings ever made, including the Karajan Der Rosenkavalier, Maria Callas' two recordings of Tosca and Placído Domingo's 1971 Don Carlo conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini.

A post about the acquisition on Norman Lebrecht's Slipped Disc blog had a lengthy statement from Universal Music Group chairman and CEO Lucian Grange:


“This is an historic acquisition for UMG and an important step in preserving the legacy of EMI Music. For me, as an Englishman, EMI was the pre-eminent music company that I grew up with. Its artists and their music provided the soundtrack to my teenage years. Therefore, UMG is committed to both preserving EMI’s cultural heritage and artistic diversity and also investing in its artists and people to grow the company’s assets for the future. As a result, we will be better positioned to fully capitalise on the many new and exciting opportunities in the current marketplace, and also able to better serve our artists, songwriters and business partners, while offering fans even more choice”.

Once ubiquitous, Philips Classics recordings are now as rare as record stores, gone the way of other labels like Argo, L'oiseu-Lyre and Teldec. Parts of the Philips catalogue have been reissued as Decca Classics. Will their once-proud rivals EMI suffer the same fate? Only time and the economy will tell.

Finding Maria Callas...in Brooklyn

An operatic treasure in Park Slope.

Sweet, innocent, and a viper: Maria Callas as Rosina.
Photo © 1958 EMI Classics

Last Saturday afternoon, following brunch, I found myself at Brooklyn Record and Tape, an old, somewhat beaten-up, but interesting record store in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Tony's shop is a living throwback, a record store crammed with vinyl, CDs, cassettes and VHS. He may even have 8-tracks--I've never asked.

And there, on top of a wooden CD crate of hip-hop CDs, it sat. The 1997 EMI reissue (on two CDs) of the 1958 La Scala recording of Il Barbiere di Siviglia. I looked at the prices for the small classical CD collection. $4 a disc. $8 for two. I bought it immediately.

Taking my new purchase home on the B63 bus, I wanted to yell and shout, to exult that I had scored Maria Callas in Park Slope. But nobody would have understood what that meant, and it was better to just take my new-found treasure home quietly.

Needless to say, I've been listening to the Callas Barbiere steadily for the last two days. It is a brisk, professional affair, graced with the presence of La Divina as the ingenious Rosina. Ms. Callas accents the viperish nature and worldly wisdom of Dr. Bartolo's young ward. Her "Una voce poco fa" is lovely, complete with a hair-raising high note in the final bars.

"Dunque Io Sono", Rosina's duet with Figaro, is the highlight of this first act, matching Maria with her longtime onstage sparring partner Tito Gobbi. Mr. Gobbi is a great comic barber, brash and arrogant during "Largo al factotum." He and Luigi Alva soar together in "All' idea di quell metallo" and "Numero quindice. It feels like the conductor Alcero Galliera, is hurrying to keep up with his singers.


This recording features Luigi Alva, early in the role that became the trademark of his career. The bel canto tenor is in good comic form, displaying the comic chops needed for Almaviva's disguised entries into Dr. Bartolo's household. "Pace gioia" elicits real laughter, as Alva puts on an irritating, nasal voice and an air of piety. Fritz Ollendorf is a harsh-toned Bartolo, but surmounts the tongue-tripping challenges of "Un dottor della mia sorta", an aria so difficult that it was left out of the opera for almost a century.

Although this is a studio recording, the nature of Barbiere allows the listener to hear Callas working in ensembles, particularly the big sextet and chorus that rings down the curtain on Act I. She uses the lower range of her instrument to create a mezzo Rosina, as the composer originally intended. And yes, there is a special thrill when her distinctive voice cuts through the texture of the other singers. How often to you get to hear a goddess do comedy?