Remy Louis

A gorgeous package giving the history of the Deutsche Grammophon classical label. It starts with the invention of the gramophone by Emile Berliner (Edison was only the first person to record sound; the system of flat discs and lateral groove recording was Berliner's) and the evolution of the Deutsche Grammophon company. This book (and its accompanying six CDs) was produced to mark the 111th anniversary of the company - an odd date celebrated essentially for marketing purposes.

The book is well illustrated with artist photographs, labels and album covers. Historical photographs are also used, but the selection of these leaves a little to be desired; much is made in the text of the high artistic standards of the company which inform every aspect of their activities, including the company's offices and factories, but the most interesting of these are not illustrated.

The book addresses the issue of DG's activities under the Third Reich fairly openly; they reprint an official communication from the Gestapo ordering them to withdraw from sale and production all records and matrices of Jewish artists and performers, and to destroy original matrices. They also comment that in fact, one copy of each was secretly retained. However, the book is more coy over the history of the label's main recording star of the 1960s, '70s and '80s, the conductor Herbert von Karajan. Von Karajan joined the Nazi Party at an early age, though he always claimed that it was for pragmatic reasons; he was (officially) thoroughly de-nazified after the war, and never showed any propensity for not working with Jewish artists after the war. However, given his key role in DG''s catalogue, this issue is barely touched upon.

The label itself took great pains to showcase the work of Jewish artists and composers in the post-war era, and for the last ten years of their lives, the superstars of their stable were, jointly, von Karajan and Leonard Bernstein.

The book does concentrate closely on artists and also on the efforts of the label to adopt to the changing world of recorded music as they moved, firstly into the era of high-fidelity with the microgroove record in the early 1950s, then stereo, and finally moving into the digital era. The technical excellence of DG is discussed, highlighting the reasons why DG never went down the route of maximising playing time per LP side so as to preserve the best possible sound quality. It also looks at the corporate changes over the history of the company, starting with their position as a subsidiary of the Gramophone Company in London, then independence, and then merger and co-operation with two other major classical labels in Europe (Decca and Philips).

The six CDs cover the whole range of DG artists, the earliest being Enrico Caruso on a 1907 recording; the latest recordings in the set date from 2009. Special mention should be made of Claudio Abbado, whose death has just been announced on the day of writing this review, 20th January 2014.… (meer)