| Teldec | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Parent company | Warner Music Group (formerly Telefunken and Decca Records) |
| Founded | 1950 |
| Genre | Classical music (Early and Baroque music) |
| Country of origin | Germany |
| Location | Hamburg |
| Official website | www |
Teldec (Telefunken-Decca Schallplatten GmbH) is a German record label in Hamburg, Germany. Today the label is a property of Warner Music Group.
Teldec was a producer of (first) shellac and (later) vinyl records. The Teldec manufacturing facility was located in Nortorf near Kiel in Germany. The company was founded in 1950 as a co-operation between Telefunken and Decca Records. The name Teldec is the result of taking the first three letters of both labels: Telefunken and Decca. Records manufactured by Teldec mostly were released under the Telefunken or Decca label, but normally these records contained no hint that they were made by Teldec. In 1983, Telefunken and Decca pulled out of Teldec and in 1988 Teldec was sold to Time Warner. In 1997, the remaining compact-disc production facility in Nortorf was to be closed by Time Warner, but after a management buyout, the new company OK Media, continued CD production. In 2001, after the merger of AOL & Time Warner, Teldec closed.
In the early 1970s, Teldec was acting for Telefunken in the development of a disc manufacturing technology for Telefunken's "TeD" video disc player TD1005, released in 1975. The Television Electronic Disc (TeD) system was more or less a predecessor of the more successful optical Philips LaserDisc video system, as the TeD system employed the idea of using FM instead of AM for storing the video signal on a disc for the first time.
The TeD video-disc player used a piezo-electric pick-up cartridge with a diamond stylus, mechanically sampling the frequency-modulated, PAL-encoded audio-video signal from thousands of concentric grooves, vertically recorded into the surface of a very thin, flexible vinyl disc. The disc was freely rotating on a thin cushion of air between the disc and a fixed plate at 1500rpm (25 Hz), the disc being stabilized only by centrifugal force. The sampling frequency of the combined audio-video signal was about 2.7 MHz. Maximum video playing time was ten minutes on a 210 mm disc, amounting to about 15,000 concentric grooves on the disc, each storing two half-frame PAL-video-lines.
A technological spin-off from the short-lived TeD video system was Teldec's Direct Metal Mastering technology, called DMM, for the manufacturing of vinyl records: The cutting lathe engraves and impresses the audio signal (via Blumlein stereo cutting) in the copper-plated mother disk, instead of in the lacquer coating on an aluminium 'grandmother' disk. This bypasses the need to electroform a father disk, firstly, and reputed allowed better retention of the modulated signals in the groove due to the copper phase not possessing the strong elastic memory of the lacquer coating on traditional blank disks.
Teldec / Telefunken issued recordings via its own record label from the 1950s. Classical recordings included performances by the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, Hamburg State Philharmonic Orchestra, and from elsewhere in Europe, such as the Orchestre symphonique de la Radiodiffusion Nationale Belge. The conductors under contract included Joseph Keilberth, Artur Rother, Belgian conductor Franz André and the German electronic organist/pianist Klaus Wunderlich who recorded solo Hammond organ recordings and early Moog synthesizer recordings (whilst recording for Teldec he earned 13 gold discs). The American violinist Joan Field recorded, for Telefunken, the violin concertos of Bruch, Dvorak, Mendelssohn, Mozart and Spohr. A project of the 1980s was the first recording of the original versions of the symphonies of Anton Bruckner with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Eliahu Inbal.
A feature of the Teldec catalogue was its coverage of early music and promotion of Historically informed performances, which were marketed from 1958 under its own sub-label Das Alte Werk. The first significant recordings were by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and his Concentus Musicus Wien, then later also with other orchestras, who became one of the main artists of the label. Teldec's largest project in this area was the prize-winning complete recording of Bach cantatas, which were recorded from 1970–1989 jointly by the Concentus Musicus Wien conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and by the Leonhardt-Consort with Gustav Leonhardt. Teldec did not however achieve the distinction of completing the first set of these works, losing to the rival series by Hänssler Classic on conventional modern instruments by Helmuth Rilling. (This started later in 1975 but managed to meet Teldec's original 1985 Bach tercentary year deadline for completion). [1] Das Alte Werk also produced the first recordings of reconstructed versions of Monteverdi's operas L'Orfeo , Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria and L'incoronazione di Poppea in a Zurich Opera cycle under Harnoncourt. In the 1990s Das Alte Werk recorded a few newer artists such as the ensembles Tragicomedia and Chanticleer, but effectively ceased new projects after Teldec's acquisition by Warner Classics.
Johann Nikolaus Harnoncourt or historically Johann Nikolaus Graf de la Fontaine und d'Harnoncourt-Unverzagt; was an Austrian conductor, particularly known for his historically informed performances of music from the Classical era and earlier. Starting out as a classical cellist, he founded his own period instrument ensemble, Concentus Musicus Wien, in 1953, and became a pioneer of the Early Music movement. Around 1970, Harnoncourt began conducting opera and concert performances, soon leading international symphony orchestras, and appearing at leading concert halls, operatic venues and festivals. His repertoire then widened to include composers of the 19th and 20th centuries. In 2001 and 2003, he conducted the Vienna New Year's Concert. Harnoncourt was also the author of several books, mostly on subjects of performance history and musical aesthetics.
The Gramophone Classical Music Awards, launched in 1977, are one of the most significant honours bestowed on recordings in the classical record industry. They are often viewed as equivalent to or surpassing the American Grammy award, and referred to as the Oscars for classical music. They are widely regarded as the most influential and prestigious classical music awards in the world. According to Matthew Owen, national sales manager for Harmonia Mundi USA, "ultimately it is the classical award, especially worldwide."
Helen Jeanette Donath is an American soprano with a career spanning fifty years.
Concentus Musicus Wien (CMW) is an Austrian baroque music ensemble based in Vienna. The CMW is recognized as a pioneer of the period-instrument performance movement.
Television Electronic Disc (TeD) is a discontinued video recording format, released in 1975 by Telefunken and Teldec. The format used 8-inch-diameter (200 mm) flexible foil discs, which spun at 1,500 rpm on a cushion of air. TeD never gained wide acceptance, and could not compete against the emerging videocassette systems of the time.
Anthony Rolfe Johnson was an English operatic tenor.
Dorothea Röschmann is a German soprano. She is famous for her performances in operas by Mozart as well as Lieder.
Direct metal mastering (DMM) is an analog audio disc mastering technique jointly developed by two German companies, Telefunken-Decca (Teldec) and Georg Neumann GmbH, toward the end of the 20th century after having seen the same technology used by RCA Princeton Labs for its SelectaVision videodiscs in the late-1970s.
Elisabeth von Magnus is an Austrian classical mezzo-soprano. The daughter of conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt and violinist Alice Harnoncourt, her professional name derives from her first marriage to Ernst-Jürgen von Magnus. She studied recorder in Vienna, theater at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and voice with Hertha Töpper at the Conservatory of Munich. Her other teachers included Paul Schilhawsky. Early in her career, she performed as a recorder soloist with the Concentus Musicus Wien. She has also worked for ORF as a presenter and announcer.
Christian Gerhaher is a German baritone and bass singer in opera and concert, particularly known as a Lieder singer.
Max van Egmond is a Dutch bass and baritone singer. He has focused on oratorio and Lied and is known for singing works of Johann Sebastian Bach. He was one of the pioneers of historically informed performance of Baroque and Renaissance music.
Kurt Equiluz was an Austrian classical tenor in opera and concert. He was a member of the Vienna State Opera as a tenor buffo from 1957 until 1983, remembered for roles such as Pedrillo in Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail. He appeared regularly at the Salzburg Festival, including world premieres such as Rolf Liebermann's Penelope in 1954. He recorded works by Johann Sebastian Bach with conductors such as Michel Corboz, Helmuth Rilling and Charles de Wolff, and prominently as the Evangelist in the first recording of Bach's St John Passion on period instruments with the Concentus Musicus Wien in 1965, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt.
Gott ist unsre Zuversicht, BWV 197.2, is a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach.
J. S. Bach - Das Kantatenwerk is a classical music recording project initiated by the record label of Telefunken in 1971 to record all 193 sacred Bach cantatas. The project was entrusted to Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gustav Leonhardt. Each conductor had his own instrumental ensemble, based in Austria and the Netherlands respectively.
The Bach cantatas project of Ton Koopman was the first complete recording of all the cantatas, including the 21 secular cantatas. Koopman conducted the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir and guest solo singers. The project began in 1995 and was completed in 2005 on 67 CDs.
Roberta Alexander is an American operatic soprano. She began her career as a lyric soprano in 1975 and spent the next three decades performing principal roles with opera houses internationally. Particularly celebrated for her performances of Mozart heroines, she was a leading soprano at the Metropolitan Opera from 1983 to 1991. In addition to principal Mozart roles like Countess Almaviva, Elettra, Fiordiligi, and Donna Elvira, she had particular success with the parts of Mimì in Puccini's La bohème and the title role in Janáček's Jenůfa. More recently she has performed secondary character roles on stage, including performances at the Grand Théâtre de Provence in 2013, La Scala in 2014, and La Monnaie in 2015. She performed the Fifth Maid in Strauss's Elektra at the Met in 2016 and Curra in Verdi's La forza del destino at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 2019.
Oliver Widmer is a Swiss operatic bass-baritone whose international career has encompassed lieder, opera, and oratorio. In 1998 he created the role of Jäger in Heinz Holliger's opera Schneewittchen.
Concerto Amsterdam was a classical chamber ensemble based in the Netherlands and active during the 1960s and 70s in both live performance and the recording studio. It was founded in 1960 by the Dutch violinist Jaap Schröder with most of its members drawn from Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. In addition to Schröder who served as the ensemble's concert master until 1973, its soloists have included keyboardist Gustav Leonhardt, violist Joke Vermeulen, flautist Frans Brüggen, and cellist Anner Bylsma.
Hildegard Heichele is a German soprano in opera, concert and recital. A member of the Oper Frankfurt from 1974, she has appeared in major European opera houses, concert halls and international festivals. She is known for Mozart roles such as Susanna, Blonde and Despina. Heichele is featured on opera recordings, including a DVD of Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss from the Royal Opera House in London, and singing concerts, such as the opening of the Alte Oper with Mahler's Eighth Symphony in 1981.
Bach composed Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, BWV 1, as chorale cantata for the Marian feast of the Annunciation, for a first performance in a church service in Leipzig on 25 March 1725. The cantata, for soprano, tenor and bass soloists, four-part choir and Baroque orchestra, takes around 25 minutes to perform.
