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Vanguard Records
Vanguard Recording Society is an American record label set up in 1950 by brothers Maynard and Seymour Solomon in New York City. It was primarily a classical label during its peak in the 1950s and 1960s, but also has a catalogue of recordings by a number of pivotal jazz, folk, and blues musicians. The Bach Guild was a subsidiary label.
The label was acquired by Concord Bicycle Music in April 2015.
The newly founded venture's first record was of J.S. Bach's 21st cantata, Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis, BWV 21 ("I had much grief"), with Jonathan Sternberg conducting the tenor Hugues Cuénod and other soloists, chorus and orchestra. "What speaks for the Solomons' steadfastness in their taste and their task", wrote a Billboard journalist in November 1966, "is that this record is still alive in the catalogue (SC-501). As Seymour says, it was a good performance, not easy to top. Of the whole Vanguard/Bach Guild catalogue, numbering about 480 issues, 30 are Bach records..." The label also recorded other baroque and earlier works, pieces from the English Madrigal School performed by the Deller Consort, Italian and French madrigal masterpieces, Elizabethan and Jacobean music, and Henry Purcell.
In 1951, Vanguard's Art Director Jules Halfant hired Marxist music critic Sidney Finkelstein on the staff of the record label, where the latter worked until 1973, mostly writing liner notes on classical LPs. In the mid-1950s, Vanguard signed blacklisted performers Paul Robeson and the Weavers. It continued to issue folk music with newly signed artists Joan Baez, Hedy West, Eric Andersen, the Rooftop Singers, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Ian and Sylvia, and Mimi and Richard Fariña. Around this time, the company briefly ran a hi-fi division titled Vanguard Stereolab; the English band Stereolab took their name from it.
In 1953, under the direction of John Hammond, Vanguard began the Jazz Showcase series that concentrated on mainstream jazz, producing about two dozen recordings before it was closed in 1958. Recordings made at the Spirituals to Swing concerts in 1938 and 1939 were released by Vanguard in 1959. The company only intermittently pursued recording jazz after that.
In the summer of 1965, Maynard Solomon hired Samuel Charters to edit the tapes of the 1964 Newport Folk Festival. Following that project, the company sent Charters to Chicago to capture the broad range of blues musicians there. Those sessions resulted in the 1966 three-album series titled Chicago/The Blues/Today!. The albums included Junior Wells with Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, Homesick James, Johnny Shines, Big Walter Horton, Charlie Musselwhite and Muddy Waters's bandmates Otis Spann and James Cotton.
Vanguard released numerous classical recordings, both domestically produced and imported. Many of the latter came from the United Kingdom's Pye Records label, featuring performances by the Halle Orchestra conducted by Sir John Barbirolli. The recordings were so exceptional that many classical radio stations programmed them. Vanguard even released some quadraphonic classical recordings in the early 1970s, including a performance of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony with the American Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski. The label also released many performances by the Utah Symphony Orchestra conducted by Maurice Abravanel, including one of the first sets of the complete ten symphonies of Gustav Mahler, a complete performance of The Nutcracker, as well as the earlier P.D.Q. Bach recordings, from 1965 to 1983. Vanguard was the first American label to release the complete 1944 high fidelity recordings of composer Richard Strauss conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in most of his tone poems; the recordings were made on the Magnetophon tape recording equipment in the Vienna Opera House.
The multiplicity of popular in-house classical music series released by the Solomons on Vanguard and Bach Guild between 1950 and 1966 included, in addition to 22 Bach cantatas, the virtuoso trumpet, virtuoso flute and virtuoso oboe, along with German University Songs with Erich Kunz, songs of the Auvergne, Viennese dances with Willi Boskovsky, traditional songs by Roland Hayes, Vivaldi's Four Seasons and other concertos from I Solisti di Zagreb, music by Ralph Vaughan Williams, numerous Haydn symphonies performed by the Esterhazy Orchestra, a double LP of Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Euridice sung in Italian with the Vienna State Opera Orchestra led by Charles Mackerras, and an influential Mahler cycle with the Utah Symphony Orchestra conducted by Maurice Abravanel.
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Vanguard Records
Vanguard Recording Society is an American record label set up in 1950 by brothers Maynard and Seymour Solomon in New York City. It was primarily a classical label during its peak in the 1950s and 1960s, but also has a catalogue of recordings by a number of pivotal jazz, folk, and blues musicians. The Bach Guild was a subsidiary label.
The label was acquired by Concord Bicycle Music in April 2015.
The newly founded venture's first record was of J.S. Bach's 21st cantata, Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis, BWV 21 ("I had much grief"), with Jonathan Sternberg conducting the tenor Hugues Cuénod and other soloists, chorus and orchestra. "What speaks for the Solomons' steadfastness in their taste and their task", wrote a Billboard journalist in November 1966, "is that this record is still alive in the catalogue (SC-501). As Seymour says, it was a good performance, not easy to top. Of the whole Vanguard/Bach Guild catalogue, numbering about 480 issues, 30 are Bach records..." The label also recorded other baroque and earlier works, pieces from the English Madrigal School performed by the Deller Consort, Italian and French madrigal masterpieces, Elizabethan and Jacobean music, and Henry Purcell.
In 1951, Vanguard's Art Director Jules Halfant hired Marxist music critic Sidney Finkelstein on the staff of the record label, where the latter worked until 1973, mostly writing liner notes on classical LPs. In the mid-1950s, Vanguard signed blacklisted performers Paul Robeson and the Weavers. It continued to issue folk music with newly signed artists Joan Baez, Hedy West, Eric Andersen, the Rooftop Singers, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Ian and Sylvia, and Mimi and Richard Fariña. Around this time, the company briefly ran a hi-fi division titled Vanguard Stereolab; the English band Stereolab took their name from it.
In 1953, under the direction of John Hammond, Vanguard began the Jazz Showcase series that concentrated on mainstream jazz, producing about two dozen recordings before it was closed in 1958. Recordings made at the Spirituals to Swing concerts in 1938 and 1939 were released by Vanguard in 1959. The company only intermittently pursued recording jazz after that.
In the summer of 1965, Maynard Solomon hired Samuel Charters to edit the tapes of the 1964 Newport Folk Festival. Following that project, the company sent Charters to Chicago to capture the broad range of blues musicians there. Those sessions resulted in the 1966 three-album series titled Chicago/The Blues/Today!. The albums included Junior Wells with Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, Homesick James, Johnny Shines, Big Walter Horton, Charlie Musselwhite and Muddy Waters's bandmates Otis Spann and James Cotton.
Vanguard released numerous classical recordings, both domestically produced and imported. Many of the latter came from the United Kingdom's Pye Records label, featuring performances by the Halle Orchestra conducted by Sir John Barbirolli. The recordings were so exceptional that many classical radio stations programmed them. Vanguard even released some quadraphonic classical recordings in the early 1970s, including a performance of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony with the American Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski. The label also released many performances by the Utah Symphony Orchestra conducted by Maurice Abravanel, including one of the first sets of the complete ten symphonies of Gustav Mahler, a complete performance of The Nutcracker, as well as the earlier P.D.Q. Bach recordings, from 1965 to 1983. Vanguard was the first American label to release the complete 1944 high fidelity recordings of composer Richard Strauss conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in most of his tone poems; the recordings were made on the Magnetophon tape recording equipment in the Vienna Opera House.
The multiplicity of popular in-house classical music series released by the Solomons on Vanguard and Bach Guild between 1950 and 1966 included, in addition to 22 Bach cantatas, the virtuoso trumpet, virtuoso flute and virtuoso oboe, along with German University Songs with Erich Kunz, songs of the Auvergne, Viennese dances with Willi Boskovsky, traditional songs by Roland Hayes, Vivaldi's Four Seasons and other concertos from I Solisti di Zagreb, music by Ralph Vaughan Williams, numerous Haydn symphonies performed by the Esterhazy Orchestra, a double LP of Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Euridice sung in Italian with the Vienna State Opera Orchestra led by Charles Mackerras, and an influential Mahler cycle with the Utah Symphony Orchestra conducted by Maurice Abravanel.