Historic Masters

Roger Beardsley – Obituary

admin — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 05:35:01 +0000

Taken from the Summer issue of CLASSIC RECORD COLLECTOR.

Roger Beardsley

Commitment, enthusiasm, joie de vivre: these qualities all characterised Roger Beardsley and would infect those who worked with him on so many projects. His sudden and totally unexpected death has been an awful shock to the wider recording industry and at a very personal [...]

Roger Beardsley

admin — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 03:35:43 +0000

It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Roger Beardsley, who died in April 2011 aged 63 years.

Roger was for many years a most important member of the board of Historic Masters Ltd.

He was also known and respected internationally as one of the finest transfer engineers of early recordings. Roger [...]

A New Issue – Issue 33 Released…

admin — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 04:19:42 +0000

With the immediate release of Issue 33 - Historic Masters has reached an important milestone.

Including our special boxed sets we have now issued more than five hundred separate recordings. Many of these had never previously been published whilst others are extremely scarce in original form.

Apart from the present issue we have also unearthed [...]

Notes to Issue 33

admin — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 03:49:42 +0000

THE EIGHT RECORDS IN OUR 33rd ISSUE – September 2010

(Prospectus by Alan Bilgora)

HM 207A/B Sigrid Onegin, Contralto (1889-1943) Der Kreuzzug – Schubert-Leitner
Sung in German with piano accompaniment by Bruno Seidler-Winkler,
Matrix number: 1461s, Issued on DG 043337, Recorded 1919 or 1920
HM 207B Ave Maria [...]

Issue 33 Released – September 2010

admin — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 03:38:12 +0000

The eight records in this issue carry Historic Masters past an important milestone – 500 Issued recordings.

Read the issue notes to Issue 33 here.

Including our special boxed sets we have now issued more than five hun- dred separate recordings. Many of these had never previously been published whilst others are extremely [...]

A New Year – A New Release from HM

admin — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 03:14:47 +0000

Historic Masters Ltd was established in 1983 to continue the series of historic reissues of vocal recordings initiated by the British Institute of Recorded Sound. Since then there have been thirty one regular issues containing five, six or seven records as well as special boxed sets of recordings of Melba, Patti and Tamagno.

We have [...]

Notes to Issue 32- Tamagno 10″ Records

admin — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 02:22:33 +0000

Il Titanico Oricalco

The above is the title of a book issued by the City of Turin to honour a favourite native son.

A literal translation might be ‘The Trumpet- Toned Titan’. Tamagno was quite simply a phenomenon – for more than thirty years after his stage debut in Turin he was the world’s greatest [...]

Issue 32 Released – January 2010

admin — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 01:56:54 +0000

Historic Masters discovered some years back that all known shellac records of Tamagno had been made from copy shells rather than the originals. We were able to access the original shells which are held in the DG archive and used these to issue a set of all the 12” recordings.

Read the issue notes to [...]

Notes to Issue 31

admin — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 05:23:04 +0000

THE SEVEN RECORDS IN OUR 31st ISSUE – MAY 2009

(Prospectus by Alan Bilgora)

HM 200A (and) HM 200B Paul Franz, Tenor, (1876-1950)
Rome Narration pts. 1-2 Tannhususer (Wagner)
Matrix numbers; 02954/5v, issued on 2-032014/5.
Sung in French with Orchestra and recorded in Paris on 22nd April [...]

Issue 31 Released – May 2009

admin — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 05:00:23 +0000

Issue No 31 contains something for all tastes. The artists hail from Great Britain, Sweden, Holland, France, Spain, and Russia, the performances splendid, the music is varied, and the quality of pressings are excellent.