Mysterious Mozart CD series

[LeMartinPecheur]

No, not "Mysterious Mozart", some New Age rubbish like "Mozart for Babies", what I'm talking about is a very extensive series of German 2CD sets of historical Mozart recordings which seems hardly to show up via Google at all.

My local Oxfam shop has had a big influx of them lately and I've bought several, and this is the second time I've found a bunch of them in Cornwall charity shops. There must have been at least two different donations since the current stocks have a good number I recognised that I've bought before, and even so, whoops, I've still managed today to buy two I already had Still, a friend will take them off my hand I'm sure...

Key features:
- The (P) and (C) dates are 2001, and are credited to 'The International Music Company AG, all rights reserved....E - info@imcompany.com'
- The catalogue no's on the spine are in the form 205xxx-302 and my xxx's range from 160 (Klavierwerke) to 178 (Cosi fan tutte, the Glyndebourne/ Busch set). So apparently at least 19 2-CD sets in the series? - I've so far snapped up 10 @ £1.99and have seen a couple more I didn't much fancy.
- The recordings are all mono. Some are ex-78 or maybe early LP but others are off-air recordings.
- Most discs are under 60' (one goes to 65' with two longish piano conc's), so were they originally issued as LPs??
- Each 2-CD set has the same cover artwork and design. A typical front says just 'Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Klavierwerke-Piano Works'. There is no 'vol no' or similar, front or back, but the series seems to be pretty big and goes beyond one recording per work as I have 2 K488s, Curzon/ Boyd/ Neel (ex-78) and Schnabel/ Rodzinski (off-air 1946 with a massive memory-lapse) and 2 K219s, Thibaud and Busch.
- The folded-sheet 'booklets' have pretty full track listings, brief notes on works and artists in German and English but no mention at all of the whole series or any other volumes in it.
- To show the sort of content here's one of the 'Klavierwerke' sets: Concerto 19 K459 (Schnabel/LSO/Sargent, 1937), Concerto 23 K488 (the aforementioned Schnabel/ Rodzinski '46), Concerto 13 K415 (Landowska - piano not hpschd! /NYPO/ Rodzinski 1945), Concerto 14 K449 (Serkin/ Busch Chamber Players/ Adolf Busch 1938).
- There are old stalwarts like symphonies and overtures from LPO/ Beecham and some maybe more exotic stuff like Casadesus in pf sonatas, Szymon Goldberg/ Lili Kraus in 4 violin sonatas.

Thank you for your patience if you've ploughed through all this detail What I'd really like to know is why doesn't Google bring up much about these discs - putting in one particular catalogue no did link to some guy's online collection-listing but I can't see any online copies for sale, and Amazon inc. Marketplace seems not to know them. However, some of the contents are still available online as 'torrent'() from German suppliers who look like they could be related to International Music Company AG. Even more importantly, how big was the series, and what am I missing in all the other vols????

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I wonder if these are semi-"bootleg" issues, LMP which might not turn up on strictly "legit" sellers' lists, but which do appear in charity shops and the like. I have a few "Frequenz"-label CDs of Live recordings from the '60s by artists contracted to the bigger companies; Guilini conducting Don Giovanni, Abbado in Mahler, a Böhm Tristan - all, I think, taken from radio broadcasts. There are other labels (HUNT, for example) that do/did this sort of thing - and some labels also went as far as claiming that performances were live when they were actually pirates of the big labels' studio recordings.

It sounds as if it's possible that this series is a mixture of out-of-copyright material transferred to CD and the off-air recording "technique" used elsewhere, which might explain their absence from sellers who can be easily "traced" and presence in individual shops that are near-impossible to "police".

[LeMartinPecheur]

I wonder if these are semi-"bootleg" issues, LMP which might not turn up on strictly "legit" sellers' lists, but which do appear in charity shops and the like. I have a few "Frequenz"-label CDs of Live recordings from the '60s by artists contracted to the bigger companies; Guilini conducting Don Giovanni, Abbado in Mahler, a Böhm Tristan - all, I think, taken from radio broadcasts. There are other labels (HUNT, for example) that do/did this sort of thing - and some labels also went as far as claiming that performances were live when they were actually pirates of the big labels' studio recordings.

It sounds as if it's possible that this series is a mixture of out-of-copyright material transferred to CD and the off-air recording "technique" used elsewhere, which might explain their absence from sellers who can be easily "traced" and presence in individual shops that are near-impossible to "police".

Interesting ideas fhg, thank you! I'm slightly acquainted with some of the low-life labels but don't think I've ever bought one. (Mr Joyce Hatto - can't recall his proper name - probably fits the description on this side of the channel).

I don't think these discs drift into quite these waters because even their off-airs are no later than the early 50s and were presumably out of copyright anyway. Their presentation is just a tiny bit better than that for a real cheapo disc intended for real cheapo shops or racks (detailed performer listings and rec. dates eg) and the whole concept looks targeted at 'serious collectors like you and me' - complete works with no isolated movements, some attempt to group works by genre, many performances that get a star or two in the old Record Guide, and in particular the inclusion of multiple recordings of the same work.

I'm glad the answer wasn't obvious anyway