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Melchior Regarding George Jellinek's July review of the recent Pearl Records issue honoring Lauritz Melchior: the second-act excerpt from Die Walkure derives not from the Metropolitan Opera broadcast of January 16, 1937--in which Marjorie Lawrence, not Kirsten Flagstad, was the Brunnhilde but rather from the November 13, 1936, San Francisco performance conducted by Fritz Reiner. The latter was the only collaboration between Flagstad and Lotte Lehmann ever recorded. Because of broadcast time limitations, the engineer started fading the sound just as Wotan (Friedrich Schorr) began his line "Geh hin, Knecht!," at which point the mistress of ceremonies came on to praise "this most extraordinary perform ance of Die Walkure." That is why the excerpt on the record is interrupted before the end of the act. MICHAEL A. LEONE; Houston, Texas Several other readers also wrote to correct Mr. Jellinek on this point. "In the complete absence of documentation for the excerpt on the album," he explained, "I guessed wrongly, as it happens." Tape "Tax" Contrary to William Anderson's July column, "Taxing Tape," the Mathias Amendment and the Edwards Bill now be fore Congress have nothing to do with "taxes" at all. These bills simply state that manufacturers of blank tape and tape recorders should be paying royalties to artists, just as record companies, radio stations, and other institutions do when they use the work of a person involved in creating an art form. Royalties go to an artist in a direct manner; taxes, on the other hand, go through the bureaucratic grind-mill. Mr. Anderson is, of course, correct in assuming that payments in the form of taxes would be illogical and ineffective. The U.S. is a capitalistic state, and a democratic one, or at least that is what we are striving for. An artist should be compensated for his work, and no one could claim that any manufacturer of tape or taping equipment was pushing his product solely for recording junior's birthday party or bird calls (that goes for videotape as well). New LP releases are down some 30 percent from several years ago-there is little incentive for a record company to look for new artists or for artists themselves to pro duce if they are not going to be paid for it. Their work does not simply "belong to the people." Mr. Anderson should ask himself why great artists flock to this country from behind the Iron Curtain before he opposes the home-taping bills. WILLIAM B. CORNELL, Dallas, Texas We think you are wrong. Royalties are usually paid to the creator of a specific artistic work after it has been used by some one else for commercial purposes. As we understand the proposed legislation now before Congress, it would require payment of a fee at the time of purchase by anyone who buys tape or tape equipment that could enable him to make illegal use of the artistic creations of others whether he in fact does so or not. -Ed. I am opposed to a blanket royalty or tax on audio and video tape and tape equipment. To me it seems un-American to assume in advance that because a person buys tape equipment he will be guilty of using it improperly to appropriate copyrighted works for financial gain. I know that a lot of audio tape machines are used by students and teachers for educational purposes in the same way that photocopiers are used in schools. Since the principle is the same, I think it would be unfair to put a royalty tax on tape recorders and not on photocopiers. And since many of the latter use plain pa per, this might lead to a tax on all paper. JAMES MORALES; New York, N.Y. Record Buying A heartfelt thank-you is overdue for James Goodfriend's column, "Buying Frustration," in the June issue. As a dealer for thirty-seven years, I simply cannot believe the present difficulty in buying classical records. For the first fifteen years or so of my shop, I could fill mist special orders for RCA, Columbia, Angel, and London within a few days. In fact, many times I have walked to the local Columbia distributor to pick up a special order while the customer waited in my shop. Then the local distributors were terminated by the manufacturers, and we were told to order from larger distributors or factory branches in Atlanta. This took a bit longer, but we could still fill an order within a week. Several years ago, the Atlanta ware houses were closed (excepting Capitol, which closed this past July 1). We were then advised to begin ordering direct from factory warehouses in New Jersey. Now, after the companies had eliminated our sources of supply except for factory-direct orders, they started instituting restrictions on purchases, including the following: (1) Columbia and Polygram cut off most of the small dealers in the country, especially the "mom-and-pop" type stores. They both terminated me, but I did get Polygram to rescind the termination. Columbia, how ever, has refused to sell to me since 1979. They allege that unless I buy at least $5,000 of merchandise per year, they lose money on my account! Years ago they stopped furnishing catalogs, sales aids, posters, etc., and no Columbia salesman has called on me in about ten years. So how could they lose money by selling me $2,000 or $3,000 worth of records a year? Yet they will sell one LP at a time direct to retail customers through their club, the Columbia Home Music Service. (2) Both RCA and Polygram have raised their minimum orders from $100 at cost to sixty record albums and tapes, or $300 to $400 at cost. At slow times of the year, this may mean that we may only be able to or der every two or three months instead of two or three weeks as in the past. Many customers will not wait. They will spend their money for something else, and, if they can find a copy of the record at a friend's house, they will tape it simply because they cannot buy it. My shop, incidentally, sells only classics--no pop or rock--so I cannot buy the records I need through distributors or one-stops. JOE LITTLE; Charlotte, N.C. Music Editor James Goodfriend's June "Going on Record" column about a Midwest reader's frustrations in trying to buy current classical recordings could have been written about me a few years ago--except that I am an invalid and had to try to order records by phone or send friends on fruitless searches. However, I stumbled on a solution to the problem: the Discount Music Club ( P.O. Box 2000, New Rochelle, N.Y. 10801). You pay $4 per year to belong, $5 the first time to cover the cost of a Schwann catalog, which becomes your "order book." Postage and handling charges are usually taken care of by the member's discount off the list price of records and by various savings coupons members receive. The service is exemplary. I often order recordings by the numbers in reviews or given over the radio. I have never experienced their not being able to obtain a new recording, and two to three weeks is all it ever takes for my orders to arrive. I have used other mail-order services but have found none to be so quick and reliable or to cover such a wide range of recordings. JUDITH ANN MILLER; Dayton, Ohio Abridged Offenbach George Jellinek's informative, useful, and essentially factual June review of the Peters International recording of Offenbach's La Vie Parisienne gives the mistaken impression that it is an abridgement. Musically, at least, it is not; in fact, it is the most complete recording of the score yet re leased. The Angel version, which Mr. Jellinek said has "more music," suffers from all of the standard cuts, which have been re stored in the Peters recording. The Angel set does have one entr'acte not included in the Peters. However, while musically complete, the Peters release has none of the operetta's dialogue; the Angel contains the abbreviated spoken text typical of operetta recordings today. If the dialogue is to be considered, then, indeed, the Angel could be claimed to be "complete" and the Peters "abridged." ROBERT J. FOLSTEIN; Bartlesville, Okla.
Also see: CES 1982--The latest hi-fi trends and product introductions.
Source: Stereo Review (USA magazine) |
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