 | This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
| Pentatone | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Founded | 2001 |
| Founder | Dirk van Dijk, Job Maarse, and Giel Bessels |
| Genre | Classical |
| Country of origin | Netherlands |
| Location | Baarn |
| Official website | pentatonemusic |
Pentatone (stylized as PENTATONE) is an international classical music label located in Baarn, Netherlands.
Three former executives of Philips Classics, Giel Bessels, Dirk van Dijk and Job Maarse, established the label in 2001. [1] The name comes from the words penta (five) and tone (sound), meaning five channels of sound. The label is renowned for its high-resolution multichannel surround sound recordings [1] which are released in the Super Audio CD format. [1] In January 2002, PENTATONE recorded the official music which was performed during the wedding ceremony of the Dutch crown prince Willem-Alexander and Máxima Zorreguieta. [2] The album, “The Music from the Royal Wedding”, sold more than 75,000 copies, thereby attaining the unique “triple platinum” status.
The label has also licensed recordings made by other labels such as Philips Classics and Deutsche Grammophon. Among these are some from the 1970s which were originally recorded for 4-channel quadraphonic sound. PENTATONE has remastered them for re-release and presented them in surround sound for the first time. All PENTATONE's hybrid Super Audio CD discs can also be heard in 2-channel stereo on conventional compact disc players.
In 2013, a new management team joined PENTATONE and the label expanded to multiple formats releases, including regular cd, vinyl, and all formats for streaming and downloads. The first vinyl was released in 2017 as a luxury 3LP edition. The label decided to honour Julia Fischer's Bach violin solo recordings (originally released by the label in 2005).
In April 2022, PENTATONE appointed Sean Hickey as managing director, succeeding Simon M Eder. [3] [4] The following month it was announced that PENTATONE had been acquired by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. [5]
In 2004, the label received a Grammy Award for their recording of Peter and the Wolf , narrated by Sophia Loren, Bill Clinton and Mikhail Gorbachev, [2] where the story is told from the perspective of the wolf and has the theme of letting animals live in peace. Other award-winning issues have included John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles, part of the American Opera Series, which won multiple awards, including the 59th Grammy Award as Best Opera Recording and Best Engineered Album. [6] [7]
In 2019 PENTATONE's premiere recording of the Mason Bates opera “The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs” won the Best Opera Recording at the 61st Grammy Awards. Among the winners were composer Mason Bates, librettist Mark Campbell, the Santa Fe Opera, conductor Michael Christie, and the cast, which included Sasha Cooke, Jessica E. Jones, Edward Parks, Garrett Sorenson, Wei Wu, and Elizabeth Ostrow. The opera was nominated for Best Contemporary Composition but lost to the Kernis Violin Concerto. [8]
In 2019, the label was awarded Label of the Year by the Gramophone Magazine. [9] In 2020, PENTATONE won the title of Label of the Year in the International Classical Music Awards. [10] In 2024, four albums received GRAMMY nominations in four different categories.
In April 2024, PENTATONE exclusive artist Sean Shibe won the Instrumental Award at the 2024 BBC Music Magazine Awards for his album Profesión.
Piano
Cello
Violin
Guitar
Clarinet
Mandolin
Soprano
Mezzo-Soprano
Countertenor
Tenor
Conductors
Ensembles
Orchestras
Composers
Deutsche Grammophon is a German classical music record label that was the precursor of the corporation PolyGram. Headquartered in Berlin Friedrichshain, it is now part of Universal Music Group (UMG) since its merger with the UMG family of labels in 1999. Deutsche Grammophon is the world's oldest surviving established record company. Presidents of the company are Frank Briegmann, Chairman and CEO Central Europe of Universal Music Group and Clemens Trautmann.
John Paul Corigliano Jr. is an American composer of contemporary classical music. With over 100 compositions, he has won accolades including a Pulitzer Prize, five Grammy Awards, Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, and an Academy Award.
James Conlon is an American conductor. He is currently the music director of Los Angeles Opera and principal conductor of the RAI National Symphony Orchestra.
Philips Records is a record label founded by Dutch electronics company Philips and Dutch-American music corporation Universal Music Group. It was founded as Philips Phonographische Industrie in 1950. In 1946, Philips acquired the company which pressed records for British Decca's Dutch outlet in Amsterdam.
David Frost is an American classical record producer and pianist. He has won 25 Grammy Awards for his work including seven wins for Producer of the Year, Classical. He is a music producer for the Metropolitan Opera and has recorded major orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Wu Man is a Chinese pipa player and composer. Trained in Pudong-style pipa performance at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, she is known for playing in a broad range of musical styles and introducing the pipa and its Chinese heritage into Western genres. She has performed and recorded extensively with Kronos Quartet and Silk Road Ensemble, and has premiered works by Philip Glass, Lou Harrison, Terry Riley, Bright Sheng, Tan Dun, Zhao Jiping, and Zhou Long, among many others. She has recorded and appeared on over 40 albums, five of which have been nominated for Grammy Awards. In 2013, she was named Instrumentalist of the Year by Musical America, becoming the first performer of a non-Western instrument to receive this award. She also received The United States Artists Award in 2008.
Hila Plitmann is an Israeli-American two-time Grammy Award-winning operatic soprano, songwriter, and actress specializing in the performance of new works.
The Frankfurt Radio Symphony is the radio orchestra of Hessischer Rundfunk, the public broadcasting network of the German state of Hesse. From 1929 to 1950 it was named Frankfurter Rundfunk-Symphonie-Orchester. From 1950 to 1971 the orchestra was named Sinfonie-Orchester des Hessischen Rundfunks, from then to 2005 Radio-Sinfonie-Orchester Frankfurt. Prior to 2015, the English translation Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra was used for international tours.
Chesky Records is a record company and label founded in 1978 by brothers David and Norman Chesky. The company produces high-definition recordings of music in a variety of genres, including jazz, classical, pop, R&B, folk and world/ethnic. Chesky artists include McCoy Tyner, Herbie Mann, David Johansen and the Harry Smiths, Joe Henderson, Macy Gray, Chuck Mangione, Paquito D'Rivera, Ron Carter, Larry Coryell, John Pizzarelli, Bucky Pizzarelli, Babatunde Olatunji, Ana Caram, and Rebecca Pidgeon.
Lawrence Foster is an American conductor of Romanian ancestry.
Marek Janowski is a Polish-born German conductor..
Cedille Records is the independent record label of the Chicago Classical Recording Foundation.
David Krakauer is an American clarinetist who performs klezmer, jazz, classical music, and avant-garde improvisation.
Everest Records was a record label based in Bayside, Long Island, started by Harry D. Belock and Bert Whyte in May 1958. It was devoted mainly to classical music.
Sean Hickey is an American composer and record label executive, born in 1970 in Detroit, Michigan, and currently based in New York. In 2022, he was appointed Managing Director of Pentatone.
The Diapason d'Or is a recommendation of outstanding (mostly) classical music recordings given by reviewers of Diapason magazine in France, broadly equivalent to "Editor's Choice", "Disc of the Month" in the British Gramophone magazine.
Mason Wesley Bates is a Grammy award-winning American composer of symphonic music and DJ of electronic dance music. He is the first composer-in-residence of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and he has also been in residence with Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Pittsburgh Symphony, and the California Symphony. In addition to his notable works Mothership, Anthology of Fantastic Zoology, and The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, he composed the score to Gus Van Sant's film The Sea of Trees. In a 2018 survey of American orchestras, he was rated the second-most performed living composer.
The International Classical Music Awards (ICMA) are music awards first awarded 6 April 2011. ICMA replace the Cannes Classical Awards formerly awarded at MIDEM. The jury consists of music critics of magazines Andante, Crescendo, Fono Forum, Gramofon, Kultura, Musica, Musik & Theater, Opera, Pizzicato, Rondo Classic, Scherzo, with radio stations MDR Kultur (Germany), Orpheus Radio 99.2FM (Russia), Radio 100,7 (Luxembourg), the International Music and Media Centre (IMZ) (Austria), website Resmusica.com (France) and radio Classic (Finland).
David Chesky is an American pianist, composer, producer, arranger, and co-founder of the independent, audiophile label Chesky Records. He is also co-founder and CEO of HDtracks, an online music store that sells high-resolution digital music.
Sean Shibe is a classical and electric guitarist from Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. He is of English and Japanese ancestry. He studied at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and with Italian guitarist Paolo Pegoraro. His debut album was described as "not just great guitar playing... the best [the jury] had ever heard" by BBC Music Magazine, and "the best solo guitar disc I've heard" by The Arts Desk.
