The Delos '30 for 30' Series

Delos News

Amelia Haygood recently wrote the following about the Delos 30th Anniversary Celebration "30 for 30" Series:

This year we will be issuing a special "30 for 30" series, revisiting some of the pivotal recordings of our 30-year adventure. The series reflects a number of high points and turning points in our Delos history. (Follow the link below, or scroll down, for the complete text.)

1: Representing our analog years is Hindemith's Four Temperaments and Nobilissima Visione with James DePreist, the London Symphony Orchestra, and Delos's first pianist, Carol Rosenberger. We made the recording in London during the Queen's Silver Jubilee celebration in 1976 (fortunately our sessions didn't coincide with the fireworks), and released it the following fall. This recording did considerable Delos consciousness-raising worldwide. The Balanchine revival of the Four Temperaments ballet came as a surprise to us – a welcome one, for ours was THE new recording, and available everywhere.

2: We made our first two digital recordings in 1979, using scientist/inventor Tom Stockham's prototype Soundstream digital recorder, with the participation of recording engineer Stan Ricker and Tom's own engineers. The two recordings, the Haydn/Hummel Trumpet Concertos and "The Sound of Trumpets," marked Gerard Schwarz's last performances as a trumpet virtuoso and his first as conductor, with his New York Chamber Symphony. At that time the orchestra was called the Y Chamber Symphony, since it was the resident orchestra of the 92nd Street Y in New York. When our overseas customers expressed bewilderment and demonstrated pronunciation problems ("what is this EE Chamber Symphony...") we persuaded the group to change its name to the New York Chamber Symphony.

3: Shortly thereafter, again with Jerry Schwarz and the NYCS, we made the first digital recording of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto in a performance by David Shifrin that was to help put him on the musical map. We had fallen in love with David's playing in Los Angeles, and were fascinated with his idea of playing the concerto on a special extended-range clarinet, made for David, that allowed him to play the clarinet solo in its reconstructed original version. Our chamber music recordings with David evolved into the notable series, which he has directed, with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

4/5: Carol Rosenberger brought her then-new Boesendorfer Imperial piano to a lovely hall in Claremont, California for two of our earliest digital recordings: the justly-famous "Water Music of the Impressionists" and one of her signature pieces, the Beethoven Sonata Op. 111. She paired the latter with the Appassionata, a special request by Tom Stockham. Carol had played Boesendorfers during her student days in Vienna, but was ecstatic to record on her own. She told us that she couldn't resist adding the low "C" found only on an Imperial to the "bourdon" effect in "The Engulfed Cathedral," which in turn thrilled our recording engineers and countless subsequent listeners.

6: Following the brilliance of the early digital sound of trumpets, clarinet and piano came "The World of the Harp," a beautiful album conceived and performed by one of the world's finest harpists, Susann McDonald. Sue brought her concert harp, Irish harp and Paraguayan harp to the warm acoustic of the old Immaculate Heart Auditorium in Hollywood, and stopped for breaks only when the birds outside the high open window decided to take their own solo turns.

7: A set of happy circumstances led to another milestone in our early digital days: producing the great Eugene Ormandy's last two recordings with his Philadelphia Orchestra. The first, and most memorable for us, was the Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5. Ormandy told us that because he wanted to make this his Tchaikovsky testament, he had taken the score when he went back to Hungary, and while relaxing there, had re-thought the music, so that he could bring something new to this recording. We made the recording in (what looked like the ruins of) the Philadelphia "Old Met," complete with armed guards, but the music, the performance and the Philadelphia Sound transcended all.

8: Gerard Schwarz's tenure with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra coincided with our "early digital" period as well, and if we have to pick a favorite among the series of recordings that resulted from this partnership, it is the Handel Water Music. LACO enjoyed outstanding wind and brass players, such as oboist Allan Vogel and French hornist Robin Graham. Jerry gave free rein to his imagination in writing ornamentation for this performance, knowing that the players could do any dazzling thing he asked of them.

9: The incomparable Arleen Auger made close to 200 recordings in her too-short lifetime, but her all-time favorite among them was "Love Songs," which she recorded for us, together with Dalton Baldwin, in the lovely chapel of the First Congregational Church in Los Angeles. By that time the distinguished recording engineer John Eargle had joined us, and this recording is high among his personal favorites as well. After recording all of the repertoire they had prepared, Arleen and Dalton decided on the spur of the moment, just for fun, to do a couple of takes of "Before I Gaze at You Again" from "Camelot." Magic! It turned out to be one of the favorite "Love Songs" tracks.

10: I've always had a soft spot for anything Scottish, so our unforgettable sojourn in Edinburgh for performances and recordings of Haydn -- with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Jerry Schwarz, Janos Starker and Carol Rosenberger – was a high point for me. In fact, we all took to calling the experience a "Haydn High." The four CDs that resulted were symphonic programs with concertos as centerpieces.

11/12: One of the most important things we've ever done is our series for the very young. Carol Rosenberger started it all with her album "Perchance to Dream – a Lullaby Album for Children and Adults." She spent a lot of time and thought on the program, wanting it to be the very best music, all with the qualities of simplicity and innocence, and not requiring sharp dynamic peaks. She consulted me along the way, wanting my psychologist's viewpoint. The album turned out to be welcomed for every human situation, beginning with the pre-natal. Parents found that it had a remarkably positive effect on infant behavior. We are gratified that the calming effect of this CD has provided solace to the very ill in hospital and hospice. "Baby Needs Mozart" was the first CD in our "Baby Needs..." series. Our aim was to call parents' and friends' attention to the enrichment potential of such music for the very young. The CD was welcomed so widely that "Baby Needs..." expanded to Baroque, Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, among others, becoming a series that, once again, has brought comfort and beauty to all ages. Especially rewarding for me are the many comments from parents to the effect that they are experiencing great music along with their children, having missed the opportunity themselves in schools that had cut out music programs.

13: Remembering times in my teens when I had wandered into cathedrals in France, and rented a chair for 10 centimes so that I could listen to music that gave me quiet inspiration, I expressed to our Delos team my desire to create an experience like this on disc. Carol and I asked our organist Todd Wilson to think about a program similar to her "Perchance." He was so enthusiastic about the idea that he brought an abundance of wonderful material to our recording session at the Cathedral of St. Philip in Atlanta. The result was the 2-CD set "In a Quiet Cathedral," once again welcomed by a diverse and grateful public.

14: Our jazz series brought us some fascinating sessions with outstanding artists in the field: Clark Terry, Art Blakey, Jimmy Rowles, Major Holley, Ron Carter, Cedar Walton, Billy Higgins, Kenny Garrett, Thad Jones, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and a number of others. We are representing this series with Joe Williams' "Nothin' But the Blues," the irresistible, one-of-a-kind album that brought Joe his first Grammy at the end of a long career. Our usually-strictly-classical John Eargle ventured into the jazz arena to engineer this series, and had a wonderful, most successful, time.

15/16/17: Of the many recordings we produced featuring music of American composers, three stand out for me, with Gerard Schwarz, the Seattle Symphony, and the New York Chamber Symphony. To me, all three albums represent the composers at their best, and at their most characteristic and charismatic: The Hanson Symphony No. 3 and Fantasy Variations (with Carol Rosenberger playing the piano solo); "Out West" with Copland's Rodeo and Billy the Kid, and Grofe's Grand Canyon Suite; and the Hovhaness "favorites" CD with Mysterious Mountain, And God Created Great Whales, Prayer of St. Gregory and more.

18/19/20: Our series of guitar recordings can be well represented by three albums. We began the guitar series with a delightful variety program, performed by the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, accurately named "From Renaissance to Nutcracker." The remarkable Paul Galbraith began his "instant classic" series for us with his own arrangements for 8-string guitar of the Bach Violin Sonatas and Partitas. In the course of his recordings for us Paul has further tweaked and developed his unusual 8-string guitar and resonance box. He will be recording a new program for us in the course of this year – one he has been working on for some time. Paul brought us the amazing Brazilian Guitar Quartet, with whom he also toured until this season. He and the other brilliant players in the group arranged and performed the highly satisfying version of the Bach Orchestral Suites that is my hands-down third pick to represent this treasurable guitar series.

21: Dennis Keene, one of America's stellar choral conductors, and his superb choir of professional singers, Voices of Ascension, have made a number of recordings for us that represent the finest in choral art. The most famous of these is probably "Beyond Chant." We recorded most of their programs, including this one, in the lovely acoustic of their "home" Church of the Ascension in New York City -- at night to minimize traffic noise. Both in the control room at the sessions and back home in our studio during post-production, I was reminded more vividly than ever of the emotional, psychological and just plain physical effect on human beings of the overtones that result when chords are sung with perfect intonation.

22: A pivotal album in our impressive Dallas Symphony Orchestra series led by the multi-talented Andrew Litton is the Tchaikovsky 1812 Overture, in the version with chorus. Also part of this album is the "Moscow Cantata," for which the baritone soloist was Vassily Gerello. Little did we know at the time that we would meet up with Vassily again in Russia, or that he would sing the title role in Rachmaninov's "Aleko" for us. The 1812 with chorus was an engineering triumph for John Eargle, and became a much-admired "surround" demo. I also remember being amazed at the quality of David Davidson's DSO Chorus and their coaches. I loved the moment when their language coach stepped quickly to the talkback in the control room and corrected a vowel sound, saying "You're beginning to sound Ukrainian there!"

23: The brilliant Zdenek Macal has done many stunning albums for us with the New Jersey Symphony, a number of them including the Westminster Symphonic Choir led by one of the choral world's heroes, Joseph Flummerfelt. To represent this series as part of our history I'm choosing the Dvorak Requiem, a 2-CD set also including the New World Symphony. Not just because this recording contains some favorite Dvorak from that composer's leading exponent in our time, but also because the album won John Eargle a long-overdue Grammy for his engineering. We wish Zdenek much happiness in his new position as Music Director of the Czech Philharmonic.

24: In 1987 we made our first recording with Jimmy DePreist's Oregon Symphony: an album we called "Bravura," that won superlatives from every corner of the globe. The lead piece on the album, Respighi's "Roman Festivals," became an audiophile benchmark. Last year we did something that we had been talking about ever since: combining this historic version of "Roman Festivals" with new DePreist/OSO recordings of "Pines of Rome" and "Fountains of Rome." We called the new album "Respighi's Rome." It is most satisfying to us all to have Jimmy's memorable versions of the three Respighi favorites together at last.

25: We go back a number of years in our ongoing series with the Shanghai Quartet, and at first I thought of representing their work on our label with one of the earlier recordings. But I could not resist settling on their most distinctive album to date, the recent release "ChinaSong." We are struck by the beautiful arrangements Yi-Wen Jiang, the 2nd violinist, has made of favorite Chinese songs. It is a labor of love on his part, and was some years in the process. Everywhere the Quartet plays some of these song arrangements, they are an instant hit with audiences. We hope to bring this experience to many more listeners.

26/27: I have left until last five albums representing the series we began about four and a half years ago with the phenomenal American pianist/conductor Constantine Orbelian. Our creative relationship with Constantine is one of the most dynamic in our history, and although we've already completed a number of recordings together, the potential here is so rich that it feels to me as if we've just begun. Representing Constantine as both pianist and conductor with his elite Moscow Chamber Orchestra is an album we called "Dedicated to Victims of War and Terror," after Shostakovich's dedication of his Chamber Symphony, which begins the program. The other work on the program is Schnittke's moving Concerto for Piano and Strings. When Constantine and the MCO perform this concerto, the experience is so powerful that the audience seems to hold its collective breath, transfixed, at the end, as if transported spiritually to another place. We want our listeners to have that experience, too. "Vodka and Caviar," on the other hand, is an exhilarating symphonic "spectacular" with Constantine's splendid Philharmonia of Russia, joined by the remarkable Spiritual Revival Choir of Russia. Here, stirring music of Khachaturian shares the program with favorites of Borodin and Tchaikovsky. I have so many favorite tracks on this album that it's been hard to settle on one for a demo.

28/29/30: Constantine has brought us some magnificent soloists, who value his almost uncanny sensitivity to their musical intentions. The great contralto Ewa Podles made her first recording with us at Skywalker Studio at a time when Constantine and the MCO were on tour in California. The feeling at Skywalker during the sessions, since echoed around the world, was that we were hearing the human voice do things we didn't know it could do, and express things in a way we didn't think possible in that music, and that Handel benefited spectacularly. Ewa will be recording a unique new program for us this year – a departure from both the Handel and Russian Aria albums. Constantine also brought us the eloquent and magnetic baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky. Dmitri's first recording for us, Passione di Napoli, with Constantine and the Philharmonia, fulfilled a lifelong dream on his part and sent the rest of us into a state of ecstasy. Constantine and I share a love for Russian opera, and high among our favorites is the Queen of Spades. We conceived the idea of making some of these wonderful works more accessible to audiences who are familiar with Italian and German opera, but have not had much opportunity to "live" with Russian opera. Our Great Scenes from Queen of Spades is the first such project, with the Philharmonia, the Spiritual Revival Choir, and a distinguished cast including Sergei Larin, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Elena Obraztsova and the wonderful young mezzo Marina Domashenko, who has made her debut solo album with us, as has the radiant, also-young soprano Olga Guryakova. As an opera buff and vocal fan from an early age, I am treasuring the experience of producing these new operatic and vocal projects, and excited about the future of the series.