Irreplaceable EMI Issues from Sir Adrian Boult, and Doctor Otto Klemperer

George

Rubbish. EMI's woes were nothing to do with "betting on the fickle world of pop music recordings" (EMI is home to the Beatles and Pink Floyd, who've sold  1.25 billion records, tapes and CDs between them) and everything to do with being taken over by an over-leveraged venture capitalist - Guy Hands - with no experience or knowledge of the music industry. His first act was to piss off two of EMI's biggest acts, the Stones and Radiohead, who upped sticks and left.

The structural changes in the industry didn'r help either, nor the fact that EMI was by far and away the smallest of the "Big Four".

But to suggest that EMI's woes were down to "pop music" (a style I presume you have no time for, hence your comment) is rot of the first order.

Enjoy your reissues though.

The glory days of EM Iin "pop" music were forty or fifty years ago. They were in trouble thirty years ago. It is amazing that they were still trading twenty years ago.

Their glory really rests not on the pop recordings but their solid and special classical archive that extends over the last 110 years. The rest is neither here nor there in its cultural significance.

And I'll enjoy the reissues, of some recordings last listened by me to on 78s nearly forty years ago.

Not unsurprisingly DG have a sense of history, but it is a disquieting situation for a great British institution.

ATB from George

So the Germans have won after all.

It would be hard to argue that.

ATB from George

PS: Kraftwerk were less good than the Beatles, IMO! But JS Bach was the best at writing music bar even another German.

Thanks for bring this to our attention George; I look forward the checking out the offerings.

BTW, why the change of ID? I thought your post's were easy to pick out previously.

Regards

Peter

Dear Peter,

I was having a crisis over the Forum about three months ago. I asked for my old registration to be culled, and a few weeks later asked for a new one. What was bugging me before has ended, and so I am back.

The Boult sets of the complete Elgar recordings for EMI, and also the set "Boult, From Bach to Wagner" contains many real gems of the recorded archive. Often Boult's earlier recordings find a more fascinating artist than he became in his "EMI Indian Summer" period during extreme old age. But like Klemperer, Boult matured over a very long career, and occasionally in the latter days both produced a striking combination of Wisdom and Fire that make the last or later recordings even more fascinating and compelling than the early ones. So it is not easy to say that the earlier or the later recordings present the optimal view. They almost all have tremendous pleasure to give.

I hope that you enjoy them!

ATB from George

I am pleased to see you back George, I can’t pretend that it didn’t seem you were not completely happy for quite a while; so we best move on now.

While I enjoy listening to music I am not a musician and do not have the depth of knowledge to analyze, or should that be understand, the complexities of a piece of music in the same way that some others have. Fortunately, this has not prevented many years of enjoyment from our music. Quite a number of our recordings have been from recommendations of a few knowledgeable folk here. We have been lucky in this respect, no disappointments so far.

Kind regards

Peter

In the Bach to Wagner set is a lovely recording of the Pastoral Symphony where Boult shows us an an all encompassing vision of Beethoven's music that is the province of truly great musicians. 

Unfortunately just as Klemperer found his reputation as a Beethoven Expert a millstone, so Boult was dogged with the tag, "British Music Boult," which actually was wrong. He was appointed to head the new BBC Symphony Orchestra for his extra-ordinarily wide repertoire, whch ranged from the new works of Schoenberg, Webern and Berg to the Madrigals of Monteverdi taking in pretty much anything in between! The problem was that he was a most uncharismatic figure on the podium, so that the audience might well have been treated to a superb performance, but they certainly did not have the treat of watching ballet on the podium!

Consequently he was regarded by many as a safe if uninspired captain of the orchestra, and his records did not tend to be big sellers when they faced competition from more demonstrative maestros. Rarely was he given the chance by the record companies to do more than plug the gaps in their catalogue, which is unfortunate. His recordings of Brahms, Wagner, Beethoven and Schubert show that his comprehension was the equal of any of his contemporaries. This is something the BBC understood as early as 1930.

But the BBC was not basing its decisions on commercial considerations, and so could go for musical quality without personal charisma. Once you consider a recording as a sound document, the ballet on the podium is not important! Like Klemperer, Boult was an admired and oft chosen accompanist of the great concerto soloists and singers of his day. That is recommendation enough in my view.

ATB from George