RCA Red Seal Records

RCA Red Seal Records
Parent company Sony Music Entertainment
Founded 1902
Founder Eldridge R. Johnson
Distributor(s) Sony Masterworks
Genre Classical Music
Country of origin US
Official Website http://www.sonymasterworks.com

RCA Red Seal Records is a classical music label and is now part of Sony Masterworks.

The Red Seal label was begun in 1902 by the Gramophone Company in the United Kingdom and was quickly picked up by its United States affiliate, the Victor Talking Machine Company, and its president, Eldridge R. Johnson. Distinctive, red paper information labels affixed to the centre of the two affiliated companies' black shellac discs inspired the name. Led by the work of the great tenor Enrico Caruso, Victor's Red Seal Records changed the perception of recorded music. The first Caruso 10-inch, 78-rpm records were issued in the United States in 1903 and became wildly successful. Other legendary opera stars were soon attracted to the studios of the Gramophone Company and its affiliates in Europe, as well as to the studios of the Victor Talking Machine Company in the United States, thus consolidating Victor's place as the American market leader in recordings.

Early acoustic recordings could be a surprisingly good medium for capturing the sound of singing voices, male voices especially, but not for musical instruments. The introduction of "Orthophonic" electrical recording in 1925 allowed for the reproduction of music with better fidelity. In 1929, Victor was purchased by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and the company eventually became RCA Victor Records.

RCA Victor's Red Seal series continued its pre-eminence from the 1930s through the 1950s due partly to the recorded output of three of the leading conductors of the time, Serge Koussevitzky, Leopold Stokowski, and Arturo Toscanini. Nearly all of Toscanini's recordings were issued on Red Seal, most of them with the NBC Symphony Orchestra (NBC was a subsidiary of RCA at the time). Conductor Eugene Ormandy made his first recordings with the Philadelphia Orchestra for Red Seal, and returned to the label in 1968, after spending many years with Columbia Masterworks Records. Leonard Bernstein also made his first recordings for RCA. Another best-selling RCA Red Seal conductor was Arthur Fiedler, who made many recordings with the Boston Pops orchestra for the label.

In 1950 RCA began releasing long-playing vinyl gramophone records, or LPs (originally introduced by Columbia Records in 1948), because they were losing artists and sales due to the company's resistance to adopting the new format.[1] Then, in 1954, RCA began experiments with stereophonic recording. Their first "Stereo Orthophonic" reel to reel tapes were issued in 1955. When stereo long-playing records first appeared in 1958, RCA introduced their highly regarded "Living Stereo" albums, many of which are available on CDs. During this period RCA was consistently seen as producing some of the finest-sounding recordings then available.

It wasn't until 1968 when RCA changed logos, de-emphasizing the Victor name and "His Master's Voice" trademarks, that the label came to be known as "RCA Red Seal Records". After General Electric absorbed RCA in 1986 and sold its interest in the record company to Bertelsmann, the RCA Victor name was revived so the label became "RCA Victor Red Seal Records" before eventually dropping the Victor and "His Master's Voice" trademarks again, and reverting to "RCA Red Seal" because Victor Entertainment had come to own the trademark rights to the Victor record label in Japan.

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Some RCA Red Seal recording artists

The following artists, conductors, and orchestras have all made Red Seal recordings. Some have also recorded or may be currently recording for other labels.


Gold Seal

The Gold Seal mid-priced label was launched in 1975 and mainly consisted of reissues of "Living Stereo" recordings previously issued on the Red Seal label. Later, many older Red Seal recordings from the 78 RPM and early LP era were reissued under the Gold Seal moniker. This included recordings by Enrico Caruso, Amelita Galli-Curci, Vladimir Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein, Jascha Heifetz, and a complete issue of recordings by Arturo Toscanini.

Silver Seal

Many Red Seal recordings were reissued on the budget-priced Silver Seal label. This mostly consisted of recordings by lesser known performers, but also included some well known artists including Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra and Charles Munch with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Issues in this series were released on CD and cassette only and did not contain liner notes.

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