Columbia Masterworks Records
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Columbia Masterworks Records was started in 1927 as Masterworks Records, a subsidiary of Columbia Records, but renamed in 1948.
It was intended for releases of classical music and artists, as opposed to popular music, which bore the regular Columbia logo. Under the leadership of its president Goddard Lieberson, a great many notable classical artists made contributions to the Columbia Masterworks library, such as the conductors Leonard Bernstein and George Szell, the pianists Vladimir Horowitz, Walter Gieseking and Oscar Levant and the organist E. Power Biggs. The composers Aaron Copland and Igor Stravinsky also appeared conducting their own works. In 1968, the landmark electronic-music album "Switched-on Bach," containing transcriptions of a number of Bach's most famous compositions for the Moog modular synthesizer, was issued on Columbia Masterworks.
The label was renamed in 1980 to CBS Masterworks Records. In 1990 it was renamed Sony Classical Records because of the sale of CBS Records to the Sony Corporation.
