The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I re-read my original post. A bit of hyperbole there. There were not "quite literally thousands of 78s stacked on tables," more like hundreds. I would guess there were probably close to a thousand records, however.

I listened to Schlusnus sing two of Schubert's lieder. An impressive baritone. Much drama in his voice.

jboger wrote:I re-read my original post. A bit of hyperbole there. There were not "quite literally thousands of 78s stacked on tables," more like hundreds. I would guess there were probably close to a thousand records, however.

I listened to Schlusnus sing two of Schubert's lieder. An impressive baritone. Much drama in his voice.

A couple of his contemporaries, celebrated in lieder, whom you might also enjoy would be Gerhard Husch and (my favorite of the lot) the Danish tenor Aksel Schiøtz. World War II was awful in so many ways it seems trivial to say this, but one of its unfortunate effects was to disrupt the careers of important musicians (not to mention ending the lives of numbers of them if they happened to be Jewish), and among those who survived the conflict it was particularly unkind to Schiøtz. He was a late discovery/bloomer/put it as you will, and just as he was hitting his prime Germany invaded Denmark, leaving him stuck in occupied territory for the duration. After the war, he underwent surgery that left one side of his face paralyzed and forced him to retrain as a baritone. A heroic effort, that, but of course he was no longer the singer he'd been before.

I have some 12" classical records on the Polydor label and I have some questions. Was this a German or an English label? Is there a way to date these records? My Guide to Dating 78s book doesn't cover Polydor. For example, the record in front of me now is green and has Alois Melichar conducting the Berlin Philharmonic. The serial number is 27288. Oh, I just looked at the dead wax and saw something! On one side it says "Made in Germany" and on the other is says "Mechan Copt. 1932". Not sure if I spelled that correctly. Does anyone know what "Mechan Copt" means? But, I assume it means this record was made in 1932.

I think it means Mechanical Copyright. There have been lots of discussions about this on the German forum https://grammophon-platten.de/. They also have a label gallery as well as links to discographies of many labels, even if some are incomplete. Their members have done some amazing research into German labels and their history. Check it out, you can use Google Translate. They also have an English language forum where you could ask your questions.

Andreas

Polydor was the export label of german Grammophon, after separation from the British Gramophone co. as a result of 1WW. After the war they were not allowed to use Nipper except inside Germany. The British enterprise also reopened its German branch as Electrola, and couldn't use Nipper inside Germany.
Deutsche Grammophon also opened a record factory in Spain in 1929, and they recorded Spanish music here, but also pressed German Grammophon and French Polydor records, all issued here under the Polydor label, and also US Brunswicks under the original label thanks to a Brunswick-Grammophon agreement of... 1927? That state of things ran until 1934 or so, when the Spanish branch of Deutsche Grammophon closed the Polydor venture, maybe as a late result of the formation of EMI in 1931, and the overtake by Spanish Gramofono (renamed as Gramofono-Odeon) of all other Spanish record brands except Columbia. That's another (long and hazardous) story. The formation of Gramófono-Odeón overtook the Spanish branches of Odeon and Parlophon, continued issuing Odeon records as a cheaper label, but after 1935 killed the Parlophon label.
I post too long... and derive into other stories sorry for that!