The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I came across someone online requesting the value an HMV album set. Any one have any ideas?

Beautifully produced and expensive when new, most album sets have very little value today, although famous composers conducting their own works are of some interest to collectors. I suspect that Act III of Tristan and Isolde on it's own would only interest someone who has the other Acts and wishes to complete the Opera.

I agree. It is beautiful. I didn't think it would be worth crazy money. What would you expect someone would pay for one?

Thanks for reply.

epigramophone wrote:Beautifully produced and expensive when new, most album sets have very little value today, although famous composers conducting their own works are of some interest to collectors. I suspect that Act III of Tristan and Isolde on it's own would only interest someone who has the other Acts and wishes to complete the Opera.

The same album was issued by Victor on the scroll label- it was a stand alone album and no other acts from the opera were issued.

I've found it to be a nice accessory to the huge Columbia set (recorded a Bayreuth) which has a lot of cuts in act 3.

I bought a full HMV Rigoletto opera album for 10 GBP some months ago. Would be hard to find interested buyers in an album with only one act of an opera.

A couple of years ago, a fellow tried to sell a roomful of such albums (operas and concerts) for ANY price above zero, and did not find any takers. I was briefly tempted, but then rationality argued that I was really interested in only 10% of that lot, and would end up with a filled room myself and a sore back. I believe he ended up dumping all of them.

Agreed - for most classical album sets, it's hard to even give them away.

I was amazed recently when I punted most of the Beethoven Sonata Society sets (Artur Schnabel) on eBay, listed at 99 pence the lot, attracting no bids the first couple of times round, but then two people had a bidding war and they sold for a considerable sum - but that was unusual and exceptional.

It's an acquired taste for sure. I wonder how many of them are still out there. How popular could they have been new?

Certain artists and singers will still sell, and there are exceptions to the rule- like Elgar conducting his own works.

estott wrote:Certain artists and singers will still sell, and there are exceptions to the rule- like Elgar conducting his own works.

Probably the most sought after Elgar album set is the one in which he was unable to take part. This was the pioneering 8 disc Edison Bell Velvet Face acoustic recording of "The Dream of Gerontius" under the direction of Joseph Batten.

Elgar was under contract to HMV, who said that the recording could not be done, but he knew and approved of Batten's project although he could not associate himself directly with it.

Edison Bell discontinued the Velvet Face label in 1927, and in the same year Joseph Batten joined Columbia where he remained for the rest of his career. His autobiography, long out of print, deserves a place on every collector's bookshelf.

Thank you for the reminder about Joe Batten's Book; I have been aware of this for well over half a lifetime but have never seen it. I have now ordered a copy.

I paid £18.00, I think, for the Edison-Bell Gerontius – an all but spotless set in the original album – more than thirty years ago. I have never seen a copy on sale since. One other enterprise of Batten's which I did come across recently is a 12" dark blue Columbia record of a dramatisation of the death of Horatio Nelson, with extracts from John Braham's 1811 ballad The Death of Nelson (conducted by Batten) interspersed with dialogue; Lewis Casson plays the Admiral and Sybil Thorndike an impossibly refined Lady Hamilton. I think the record, which begins and ends rather abruptly, must be a shortened version of a public presentation commemorating the 125th anniversary of Trafalgar (21 October 1930). I hope there will be something about this in the book.

Some albums are ubiquitous, such as the Philadelphia/Stokowski version of Tchaikovsky's fifth symphony from the middle 1930s (Victor and H.M.V.) and the English-language Pagliacci (Columbia, 1927).

Oliver Mundy.