Russian
Recordings 1899 ─
1914
.
Alan
Kelly has provided a detailed account
of the initial recording operations
of the Gramophone Company in Russia.
When the formation of the Gramophone
Company was being discussed in 1897,
Emile Berliner agreed in exchange for
a fee and a good-sized shareholding
in the new company to sell his rights
to the recording process in all parts
of the world except for North and South
America (Japan later became part of
the American sphere of influence.) He
also agreed that Fred Gaisberg should
come to Europe and be the Company's
first (and at that time only) recording
"expert."
Beginning with William Sinkler Darby's
secret recording tour in 1899, the Russian
output of the Gramophone Company was
to become a major portion of its activities.
Berliner engaged Darby, who was equally
capable and well-versed in all the processes
required to make records, provided another
recording machine and sent him to Hanover.
There Joseph Berliner arranged for him
to visit St. Petersburg and make recordings
of the artists at the Imperial Opera,
or of anyone else he could find. Darby
was provided with the services of an
assistant in the person of Kurtz Heineke
and, since it is obvious that there
was a recording machine already in Hanover,
Heineke may have been the unofficial
expert who made the first German recordings
in Berlin. Joseph set aside a small
building and some steam presses where
Darby's efforts could be turned into
saleable records.
Darby's first task was to check the
recording machine already in Hanover,
perform necessary repairs and purchase
the materials he would need in St. Petersburg.
Castings for "the large machine"
were expected on March 27 and he comments
in his diary that the Gramophone Company's
representative,
Hawd had been sent over to London the
day before [March 22nd] and
they do not know in London that I am
here but they have found out
through Mr. Royal I suppose that I was
coming.
A
further interesting remark, made in
Russia on April 17th was that"
I heard today that Child is coming over
to Russia with a Johnson
Recording machine and will be here in
about two weeks.
Darby reached St. Petersburg from Berlin
on March 30th 1899 and negotiated sales
terms and a contract between Joseph
Berliner and certain dealers, apparently
on behalf of Hanover and with no mention
at all of London. In Darby's diary the
dates are given "New Style"
(as in the rest of Europe) whereas when
the actual records are examined, the
dates are plainly "Old Style"
and therefore it is necessary to add
fifteen days to convert them to modern
usage. In London the details of each
record were entered in a ledger and
in those days good business practice
dictated that at the beginning of each
day (not the end) the clerk drew a line
under the previous day's work and below
that entered the new date before making
any additions to the contents. Since
there were no matrix numbers, recordings
could only be traced or kept track of
by reference to the ledger and it was
therefore essential that the record
itself showed the date of the ledger
page on which it was entered. Although
the dates were not always dates of recording
they could be close enough, since zinc
matrices had to be etched as soon as
possible, preferably the same day because
of their fragility, but a delay of a
day or two was perfectly permissible,
particularly if the young expert had
been invited out to dinner, which seems
to have been a frequent occurrence!
There is a gap for 21st April to 15th
May so that the bulk of the session
remains unclear. On 10th April (New
Style), Darby made his first experimental
recording which was not successful,
as were several more the next day. Things
thereafter improved although he had
trouble with his materials and difficulties
in getting singers willing to make records.
However, by the time the session ended
on May 10th (April 25th OS) he had succeeded
in producing some 243 successful discs
in four weeks.
Meanwhile the Gramophone Company's representative
at Hanover, Jack Watson, had arrived
back from London and in May was writing
to report that something odd was going
on. He was not permitted to visit certain
parts of Joseph Berliner's factory and
he suspected that records were being
pressed there!
The Gramophone Company's regular issues
were numbered from 1 to 9999 and the
few Arabic and Chinese items which had
appeared were numbered from 10000 upwards.
Hanover's use of 20000 and up would
be a remarkable coincidence - if that
is what it was. One suspects that the
Gramophone Company insisted on its rights
and acquired the plates (and their maker)
almost as soon as they reached Hanover
and that the catalogue numbers were
added on instructions from London. The
latest date to appear on published records
is 25th April (OS) which is equivalent
to May 10th. Since there are thirty-seven
records with this date, Darby probably
finished recording in St. Petersburg
before May 10th and the waxed zinc plates
would be "written up' and processed
later, but on May 15th he reports his
departure from London with Fred Gaisberg
and Theodore Birnbaum bound for Leipzig
and the famous "six cities"
tour of Europe.
Darby's records were different in appearance
- the details written in the center
of the disc did not include the recording
angel trademark and were inscribed inside
a square box. There are no matrix numbers,
only a series of catalogue numbers beginning
at 20000 and there is no possibility
of confusing them with regular issues.
Darby recorded the Berliner disc on
the left below in November or December
1901 in St. Petersburg, although the
label reads Moskau, which was the location
of the artist Peter Nevsky. The matrix
number 1696B can be seen to the right
of the spindle hole. The disc on the
right was recorded in Tiflis by Oskar
Kamionsky shortly afterwards. The engraved
matrix number reads 2088B-N-2z. The
remaining entries are embossed. The
suffixes must have been added by a technician
at the processing plant in Hanover.
The lower halves of both discs are embossed
in Cyrillic characters.
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Berliner
20089
April
30, 1899 (NS)
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Berliner
29132, embossed in Russian
St. Petersburg, late 1901
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Such
was the birth of the Gramophone record
in Russia. Darby was sent back to St.
Petersburg in the following April, 1900,
this time officially accredited as a
Gramophone Company expert and continued
his career. He was accompanied once
again by Fred Gaisberg who described
the making of Catalogue Number 21009
by Alexander Taneiev on April 9th [Alan
Kelly revised this date to March 29,
1900] in his book Music on Record, page
33. Fred Gaisberg was back again in
March 1901, when he introduced to Russia
the new Johnson all-wax process with
its greatly improved sound quality and
was back in London on 8th April to make
the first ten-inch recordings. He was
followed in the same year again by Darby,
whose third visit extended into 1902,
and then by Franz Hampe in mid-1902.
By this time recording sessions were
not confined to St. Petersburg, but
included Moscow and Warsaw as well and
business was booming so much that over
half the total profits of the Company
came from the Russian area. Recordings
at such exotic places as Samarkand,
Tashkent and Merv were intended for
their own localities and were listed
in the Orient Catalogue. Apart from
recordings made in St. Petersburg, Moscow
and Warsaw where most of the bulk originated,
other centres include Kazan, Baku (on
the Caspian), Tiflis (in Georgia), Lwow,
Cracow and Poznan in Poland, Kiev, Poltava,
Kharkov and Odessa in the Ukraine with
Drohobycz in Galicia, Wilna in Lithuania,
Riga in Latvia, Reval and Tartu in Estonia,
Armavir in Circassia, Nizhny-Novgorod
(now Gorki) and Yasnaya-Polyana (home
of Count Leo Tolstoy).
The number of zincs and waxes cut was
enormous and their range incredibly
wide. The number of copies pressed must
have been equally staggering and one
rapidly gains the impression that the
streets of Russian cities must have
been paved with old records. (Although
one wonders where they all are today!
For the above, I am grateful to Alan
Kelly.)
At the beginning of the twentieth century
the gramophone industry of Russia consisted
mainly of small factories. The two largest
of these were located in Moscow -─ПИШУЩИЙ АМУРЪ (in Western transliteration Pishuschiy
Amur, "The Recording Amour"
or Cupid) and "Pathé Bros;
one in the suburb near the Aprelevka
railway station - "Metropol Records"
- and one more in St. Petersburg (the
factory of the Russian-American corporation
"Gramophone") with a subsidiary
in Riga, Latvia. There were also Russian
branches of foreign gramophone concerns,
including Zonophone Records, Bermener
Records, and Beka. A substantial quantity
of disks produced by leading companies
was imported (including records of Russian
performers).
(The
above is from the website
http://oldradio.onego.ru/PLASTINKI/index_e.html)
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St.
Petersburg, December 1901
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Moscow,
January 1902
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The
first 10-inch labels show the raised
The variant. The labels on the right
above and below are from Chaliapin's
first recording session.
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Label
in English, 1902
REPRODUCED
IN HANOVER
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Label
in Russian, January 1902
REPRODUCED
IN RUSSIA
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When
the Gramophone Company began to press
Victor recordings imported from the
United States, as early as 1904, most
of these were pressed not only at the
Hanover plant in Germany with English
labels, but also at the Riga plant with
Russian labels and after 1907 at the
Ivry plant outside of Paris with French
labels. The pressing on the left above
bears the imprint REPRODUCED IN HANOVER
on the reverse, while that on the right
reads REPRODUCED IN RUSSIA.
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7-inch,
St. Petersburg 1902
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10-inch,
St. Petersburg, 1901
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The
label on the left above is from a stamper
III pressing and is only 85 mm in overall
diameter. The flush label within a raised
ring shows the matrix number 293x-d-z,
and was probably issued after November
1902. The disc on the right was recorded
by Nicolai Figner in St. Petersburg
in December 1901, during William Darby's
second visit to Russia. It was the first
of a series of ten recordings by Figner
known to have been accorded a Red Celebrity
label. These were followed closely by
the first recordings of Chaliapin, probably
in January 1902, Sobinov, and other
great singers from Russia and elsewhere.
The first stamper issues were processed
at the Hanover plant. By 1903 the Riga
plant was pressing third stamper copies
of this recording, with labels in Russian.
The label below is from a recording
made in Moscow in March-April 1905 by
Varya V. Panina. Robert Kensch, whose
name appears in Cyrillic below the label,
was a major dealer in gramophones and
records in Moscow prior to the Russian
Revolution of 1917. The horseshoe was
his monogram. Let us hope that he had
better luck than this indicates, since
all the luck would have run out!
After
the pressing plant in Riga was completed
in 1902, all recordings made in St.
Petersburg, Moscow, and other recording
locations within the Russian empire
were processed there. They were marked
on the reverse with the Recording Angel
trademark as well as the phrase REPRODUCED
IN RUSSIA. The Russian language
was used for all parts of the lower
half of the design except the catalog
number. English was retained for the
record label in an arc across the top
and for the language and the instrument
or voice across the center of the label.
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Riga
overprint 1902
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Russian
overprint, recorded Nov 7, 1909 |
Caruso
recording of Dec 27, 1910 with Russian
designation |
Darby
supervised the first 12-inch recording
in Russia in early 1903. The disc, GM
022000 shown below, was Nikolai Figner’s
first and only 12-inch recording. The
matrix number 1y can be seen
at the lower edge of the runoff area.
The content of matrix numbers 2y
through 8y is unknown, and may
have been further but unsatisfactory
recordings by Figner. It was not accorded
Red Label status; of the ninety-one
12-inch G&T issues, that courtesy
was accorded only to Andre Labinsky.
The CO. marking confirms Kelly’s
statement that the disc was issued in
June 1903.
Figner’s
only 12-inch recording
The
Russian branch of the Gramophone Company
used a large degree of latitude regarding
various policies and changes ordered
by the Head Office in London. The figures
below show that as late as December
1910 the manufacturing plant in Riga
was still using the original G&T
label design that had been abandoned
by the remaining branches some two years
previously. Note that the company designation
in the central figure above indicates
that the disc was manufactured in Riga,
as were most of the others.
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Russian
pre-DOG Concert label
Moscow, Jan 27, 1910
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All
Russian fonts
Moscow, Feb 6, 1910
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Because
of the semi-autonomous actions of the
pressing plant at Riga, we cannot determine
with any certainty when the various
changes in Russian labels occurred.
They appear to fall into categories
paralleling those of the other Gramophone
Company labels. Thus, those with Russian
language printing or overprints issued
before the completion of the Riga processing
plant in 1902 equate to the original
Gramophone & Typewriter, i.e., G&T
labels, and have more or less the same
general design, aside from the language
used, sometimes simply for the title
of the selection, but occasionally also
for the name(s) of the artist(s).
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Russian
pre-DOG Monarch
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St.
Petersburg, 1908
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Moscow,
Jan 28, 1910
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It
is difficult to determine when the Riga
plant began to use labels with the colored
Cupid. For reasons outlined below, it
was probably after February 1909, when
G&T had introduced the "His
Master’s Voice" trademark on its
labels. The two figures above show typical
Gramophone Company pre-DOG labels as
late as September 1911, more than two
years after the HMV trademark was ordered
to be placed on all subsequent Gramophone
Company issues.
The
7-inch disc on the left below was recorded
by Franz Hampe. Note that the catalog
number was used twice more for 10-inch
recordings in 1913 and 1914 by Fred
Gaisberg! The ten-inch record on the
right was recorded by Franz Hampe in
Lwow, Poland. Ruthenian was a historic
East Slavic language, spoken in the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania and later in
the East Slavic territories of the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth.
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St.
Petersburg, December 1906
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Lwow,
November 19, 1909
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