Unicorn-Kanchana

Unicorn-Kanchana
Unicorn-Kanchana
Founded	1968
Founder	John Goldsmith
Distributor(s)	Heritage Records
Genre	Classical music, film soundtracks
Country of origin	United Kingdom

Last updated March 10, 2023

Unicorn-Kanchana is a British independent record label founded by John Goldsmith (died 2020), a former London police officer. Originally known as Unicorn Records, the name Kanchana was added later. In Hindu and Buddhist mythology, the female name Kanchana means an Apsara, a spirit of the clouds and waters.

The label specialised mainly in classical music and film soundtracks. Artists signed to the label included Andrzej Panufnik, Jascha Horenstein, Jennifer Bate, Henry Herford and Peter Maxwell Davies. The label also released several recordings of lesser-known British composers, including Havergal Brian, George Dyson and Cipriani Potter. Additionally, under licence it released four discs of recordings made in London by the American composer Alan Hovhaness, thereby introducing the composer to a European audience.

The Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra made the very first commercial recording of Havergal Brian's music. Symphonies Nos. 10 and 21, conducted by James Loughran and Eric Pinkett respectively, were recorded at the De Monfort Hall, Leicester in 1972. The producer was Robert Simpson and the LP was released by Unicorn Records to great critical acclaim in 1973. A special edition of the television programme Aquarius gave considerable coverage to the recording session (see video links below).

Bernard Herrmann was also a Unicorn artist and released several albums of his own film soundtracks as well as a symphony and his opera Wuthering Heights , based on the novel of the same name.

Horenstein's Mahler recordings (Symphonies 1, 3 ^[1] and 6) were released by the label, as well as his readings of the music of Carl Nielsen, the recording of the last-named's 5th Symphony being the first recording of the new label.

In 1970, Unicorn recorded Andrzej Panufnik's Universal Prayer in Westminster Cathedral. Composed for four vocal soloists, a choir, three harps and organ, it was conducted by Leopold Stokowski in the presence of the composer.

The television composer Laurie Johnson recorded film scores on Unicorn-Kanchana, as well as an album of his own music from The Avengers , The New Avengers and The Professionals . Like Herrmann, he also released a symphony (for jazz orchestra, subtitled Synthesis) for the label.

Unicorn-Kanchana was one of the labels which released recordings using Ambisonic recording technology during the 1970s and 1980s. One of the most celebrated was Laurie Johnson's re-recording of Herrmann's North by Northwest score.

The label ceased producing its own CDs in the 1990s. Since then, much of its classical output has been re-released on the budget Regis label, the film music being licensed to several other small labels. In 2008 several long-unavailable Unicorn recordings started to re-emerge via music download sites.^[2]

In 2017 an agreement with intellectual rights company, Treasure Island Music, enabled Heritage Records to begin manufacture and distribution of Unicorn-Kanchana's catalogue once more.^[3]^[4]

Related Research Articles

The San Francisco Symphony (SFS), founded in 1911, is an American orchestra based in San Francisco, California. Since 1980 the orchestra has been resident at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in the city's Hayes Valley neighborhood. The San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus (1972) are part of the organization. Michael Tilson Thomas became the orchestra's music director in 1995, and concluded his tenure in 2020 when Esa-Pekka Salonen took over the position.

Havergal Brian was an English composer. He is best known for having composed 32 symphonies, most of them late in his life. His best-known work is his Symphony No. 1, The Gothic, which calls for some of the largest orchestral forces demanded by a conventionally structured concert work. He also composed five operas and a number of other orchestral works, as well as songs, choral music and a small amount of chamber music. Brian enjoyed a period of popularity earlier in his career and rediscovery in the 1950s, but public performances of his music have remained rare and he has been described as a cult composer. He continued to be extremely productive late into his career, composing large works even into his nineties, most of which remained unperformed during his lifetime.

Robert Wilfred Levick Simpson was an English composer, as well as a long-serving BBC producer and broadcaster.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bernard Herrmann</span> American composer (1911–1975)

Bernard Herrmann was an American composer and conductor best known for his work in composing for films. As a conductor, he championed the music of lesser-known composers. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest film composers. Alex Ross writes that "Over four decades, he revolutionized movie scoring by abandoning the illustrative musical techniques that dominated Hollywood in the 1930's and imposing his own peculiar harmonic and rhythmic vocabulary."

Symphony No. 4 may refer to:

Jascha Horenstein was an American conductor.

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies was an English composer and conductor, who in 2004 was made Master of the Queen's Music.

Sir Andrzej Panufnik was a Polish composer and conductor. He became established as one of the leading Polish composers, and as a conductor he was instrumental in the re-establishment of the Warsaw Philharmonic orchestra after World War II. After his increasing frustration with the extra-musical demands made on him by the country's regime, he defected to the United Kingdom in 1954, and took up British citizenship. In 1957, he became chief conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, a post he relinquished after two years to devote all his time to composition.

Colin Matthews, OBE is an English composer of contemporary classical music. Noted for his large-scale orchestral compositions, Matthews is also a prolific arranger of other composer's music, including works by Berlioz, Britten, Dowland, Mahler, Purcell and Schubert. Other arrangements include orchestrations of all Debussy's 24 Préludes, both books of Debussy's Images, and two movements—Oiseaux tristes and La vallée des cloches—from Ravel's Miroirs. Having received a doctorate from University of Sussex on the works of Mahler, from 1964–1975 Matthews worked with his brother David Matthews and musicologist Deryck Cooke on completing a performance version of Mahler's Tenth Symphony.

Laurence Reginald Ward Johnson, is an English composer and bandleader who has written scores for dozens of film and television series and has been one of the most highly regarded arrangers of instrumental pop and swing music since the 1950s with works often serving as stock production music.

Chandos Records is a British independent classical music recording company based in Colchester. It was founded in 1979 by Brian Couzens.

<i>Wuthering Heights</i> (Herrmann) Opera by Bernard Herrmann

Wuthering Heights is the sole opera written by Bernard Herrmann. He worked on it from 1943 to 1951. It is cast in a prologue, 4 acts, and an epilogue that repeats the music of the prologue. The opera was recorded in full by the composer in 1966, but it had to wait until April 2011, the centenary of the composer's birth, for a complete theatrical performance.

Charles Allan Gerhardt was an American conductor, record producer, and arranger.

The Symphony No. 3 by Robert Simpson was written in 1962 and dedicated to veteran composer Havergal Brian. The premiere was given by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra on 14 March 1963 under the conductor Hugo Rignold. Its BBC Proms premiere was given by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on 21 August 1967 under the conductor Charles Groves. The US premiere was given by the Oklahoma City Symphony Orchestra on 8 December 1974 under its then Music Director, Ainslee Cox.

Paul Kim is an American classical pianist.

Lancelot Beresford Bryan Fairfax was an Australian conductor based in the United Kingdom, who was known for his championing of little known or neglected works.

The Symphony No. 3 by Peter Maxwell Davies was composed in 1984 on a commission from the BBC Philharmonic, who gave the world premiere on 19 February 1985, at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, with Edward Downes conducting.

Philip Powers is a record producer - and author - specialising in film scores and classical music. His recordings have been nominated for five ARIA Awards. He has produced 34 CDs for the 1M1 Records label including The Lighthorsemen and The Coolangatta Gold. He has also produced or executive produced more than 50 CDs for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra on Sydney Symphony Live and other labels. A number of these have been with the conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy as well as two CDs with the conductor Gianluigi Gelmetti. Another CD featured Vladimir Ashkenazy as pianist playing rare Rachmaninov works. He was supervising producer of Sir Charles Mackerras, a double CD featuring famous Czech repertoire and Richard Strauss' Also sprach Zarathustra conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras.

Regis Records is a British classical music record label based in Milborne St Andrew, Dorset which is mainly known for re-releases out of print recordings by other, sometimes defunct, British independent labels. The record label is a side business of Selections, a gardening mail order company, and also distributes other labels.

Alexander Sladkovsky is a Russian conductor. He is the Chief conductor and Artistic director of the Tatarstan National Symphony Orchestra, People's Artist of Russia, People's Artist of Tatarstan, winner of the III International Prokofiev Competition (1999).

References

Videos

The Unknown Warrior A documentary featuring the LSSO recording session of symphonies Nos. 10 and 21 and an informal interview with the composer

Unicorn-Kanchana

Contents

Related Research Articles

References

Videos

See also