Decca is now home to Squid Game
OrchestrasThe try-anything label has recorded an album by Jung Jaeil, the South Korean composer behind the soundtracks for the mass-audience films Parasite and Squid Game.
‘Listen’ is ‘an intimate piano-based album featuring warm cinematic strings’. Recorded at Norway’s Rainbow Studio and performed by the Budapest Scoring Orchestra, it has all the hallmarks of a Decca project.
Jung Jaeil (pictured) says, “I’m just taking my first step with Piano, which is my voice. The step that is taken carefully like a baby led me deep inside. I want you to listen to my voice. I want to listen to yours and all the voices of everything that surrounds us. I hope that you could feel alive when you listen to my voice.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JDWJzKYfdc
Believe it or not : Cecilia Bartoli’s “Vivaldi Album” is no more available.
Does anyone really care about this? Polygram and the other big Premier League players have long since ditched any serious claim to the classical market. They have a great future behind them, as documented by the Eloquence syndicate’s splendid reissues of their finest recordings from the last century. These days, the classical market is firmly in the hands of the independents, with Naxos having the largest stake and the likes of cpo, Chandos, Dutton, Hyperion, Capriccio, MDG, BIS and Brilliant Classics pouring out a wealth of new releases every month.
Back in the last millennium, when I was a youngster keen to explore classical music, the market was dominated by EMI, Philips, Decca and DG; it was hard to get hold of anything on record other than core repertoire performed by major celebrities and ensembles. We were spoiled for choice when it came to recordings of Beethoven symphonies, The Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto or The Bruch Violin Concerto (the other two of each being terra incognita). Happily, the Third Programme (and, in its infancy, Radio 3) provided much broader repertoire.
These days, thanks to CDs and the independents, one can get pristine recordings of almost anything. Furthermore, the independents have offered opportunities for lesser-known but outstanding artists and ensembles. They are mostly celeb-free, with artists being selected for their musical qualities rather than for their names.
We record fans have never had it so good – so who cares if Decca devotes itself to aural chewing gum?
“The try-anything company” needs to because it can’t survive on focusing on only 2% of the music business, as SD suggests it should with a not so subtle whiff of snobbery n disapproval. “Mass audience films” ?! My God, what’s this world coming to??!!
The formerly great commercial labels rotted out since the late 1970s, victims of their ignorant corporate Uber Fuhrers. That created a fertile atmosphere for small, independent labels run by knowledgeable folks with 3-digit IQs and solid musical educations who didn’t need to report to corporate nincompoops whose only concerns were sales figures.
I don’t understand his “vision statement.”