RCA Red Seal Records is a classical music label and is now part of Sony Masterworks.
The Red Seal label was begun in
1902-Events:*April 30 - Claude Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande is premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, with André Messager conducting.*June 9 - the first complete performance of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 3 is given in Krefeld...
by the
Gramophone CompanyThe Gramophone Company, based in the United Kingdom, was one of the early recording companies, and was the parent organization for the famous "His Master's Voice" label...
in the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and was quickly picked up by its
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
affiliate, the
Victor Talking Machine CompanyThe Victor Talking Machine Company was an American corporation, the leading American producer of phonographs and phonograph records and one of the leading phonograph companies in the world at the time. It was headquartered in Camden, New Jersey....
, and its president,
Eldridge R. JohnsonEldridge Reeves Johnson co-created the Victor Talking Machine Company alongside Emile Berliner, a United States corporation, and built it into the leading American producer of phonographs and phonograph records and one of the leading phonograph companies in the world at the time.In...
. Distinctive, red paper information labels affixed to the centre of the two affiliated companies' black shellac discs inspired the name. Led by the work of the great tenor Enrico Caruso, Victor's Red Seal Records changed the perception of recorded music. The first Caruso 10-inch, 78-rpm records were issued in the United States in 1903 and became wildly successful. Other legendary
operaOpera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
stars were soon attracted to the studios of the Gramophone Company and its affiliates in Europe, as well as to the studios of the Victor Talking Machine Company in the United States, thus consolidating Victor's place as the American market leader in recordings.
Early acoustic recordings could be a surprisingly good medium for capturing the sound of singing voices, male voices especially, but not for musical instruments. The introduction of "Orthophonic" electrical recording in 1925 allowed for the reproduction of music with better fidelity. In 1929, Victor was purchased by the Radio Corporation of America (
RCARCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...
) and the company eventually became RCA Victor Records.
RCA Victor's Red Seal series continued its pre-eminence from the 1930s through the 1950s due partly to the recorded output of three of the leading conductors of the time,
Serge KoussevitzkySerge Koussevitzky , was a Russian-born Jewish conductor, composer and double-bassist, known for his long tenure as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1924 to 1949.-Early career:...
,
Leopold StokowskiLeopold Anthony Stokowski was a British-born, naturalised American orchestral conductor, well known for his free-hand performing style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from many of the great orchestras he conducted.In America, Stokowski...
, and
Arturo ToscaniniArturo Toscanini was an Italian conductor. One of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 19th and 20th century, he was renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his photographic memory...
. Nearly all of Toscanini's recordings were issued on Red Seal, most of them with the
NBC Symphony OrchestraThe NBC Symphony Orchestra was a radio orchestra established by David Sarnoff of the National Broadcasting Company especially for conductor Arturo Toscanini...
(
NBCThe National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
was a subsidiary of RCA at the time). Conductor
Eugene OrmandyEugene Ormandy was a Hungarian-born conductor and violinist.-Early life:Born Jenő Blau in Budapest, Hungary, Ormandy began studying violin at the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music at the age of five...
made his first recordings with the
Philadelphia OrchestraThe Philadelphia Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. One of the "Big Five" American orchestras, it was founded in 1900...
for Red Seal, and returned to the label in 1968, after spending many years with
Columbia Masterworks RecordsColumbia Masterworks Records was a record label started in 1927 by Columbia Records.It was intended for releases of classical music and artists, as opposed to popular music, which bore the regular Columbia logo. Masterworks Records' first release, in 1927, was a complete performance of the...
.
Leonard BernsteinLeonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
also made his first recordings for RCA. Another best-selling RCA Red Seal conductor was
Arthur FiedlerArthur Fiedler was a long-time conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra, a symphony orchestra that specializes in popular and light classical music. With a combination of musicianship and showmanship, he made the Boston Pops one of the best-known orchestras in the country...
, who made many recordings with the Boston Pops orchestra for the label.
In 1950 RCA began releasing long-playing vinyl gramophone records, or LPs (originally introduced by
Columbia RecordsColumbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
in 1948), because they were losing artists and sales due to the company's resistance to adopting the new format. Then, in 1954, RCA began experiments with stereophonic recording. Their first "Stereo Orthophonic" reel to reel tapes were issued in 1955. When stereo long-playing records first appeared in 1958, RCA introduced their highly regarded "Living Stereo" albums, many of which are available on CDs. During this period RCA was consistently seen as producing some of the finest-sounding recordings then available.
It wasn't until 1968 when RCA changed logos, de-emphasizing the Victor name and "His Master's Voice" trademarks, that the label came to be known as "RCA Red Seal Records". After
General ElectricGeneral Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
absorbed RCA in 1986 and sold its interest in the record company to
BertelsmannBertelsmann AG is a multinational media corporation founded in 1835, based in Gütersloh, Germany. The company operates in 63 countries and employs 102,983 workers , which makes it the most international media corporation in the world. In 2008 the company reported a €16.118 billion consolidated...
, the RCA Victor name was revived so the label became "RCA Victor Red Seal Records" before eventually dropping the Victor and "His Master's Voice" trademarks again, and reverting to "RCA Red Seal" because
Victor Entertainmentis a subsidiary of Japan Victor Company that produces and distributes music, movies and other entertainment products such as anime and television shows in Japan. It was formerly known as...
had come to own the trademark rights to the Victor record label in
JapanJapan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
.
Some RCA Red Seal recording artists
The following artists, conductors, and orchestras have all made Red Seal recordings. Some have also recorded or may be currently recording for other labels.
Gold Seal
The Gold Seal mid-priced label was launched in 1975 and mainly consisted of reissues of "Living Stereo" recordings previously issued on the Red Seal label. Later, many older Red Seal recordings from the 78 RPM and early LP era were reissued under the Gold Seal moniker. This included recordings by Enrico Caruso, Amelita Galli-Curci, Vladimir Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein, Jascha Heifetz, and a complete issue of recordings by Arturo Toscanini.
Silver Seal
Many Red Seal recordings were reissued on the budget-priced Silver Seal label. This mostly consisted of recordings by lesser known performers, but also included some well known artists including Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra and Charles Munch with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Issues in this series were released on CD and cassette only and did not contain liner notes.
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