Welcome to our Fall 2025 issue. I would first like to introduce a new contributor, Jonathan Woolf, who has supplied two articles on the great English violinist (and composer), Albert Sammons. Many of you will be familiar with reviews Jonathan has written for International Piano and Musicweb-International.com, among other classical music outlets. We are grateful to have him onboard. For nearly two years I have been able to rely on the graphic editing work of Vasily Duda, a Ukrainian designer, whose work has enabled us to re-produce rare photos, album covers and label graphics with such like-new resolution. Thirty pages in the current issue feature work he has done for Liner Notes. He is an absolute wizard not only at restoring archival material, but also at creating new content, and I highly encourage anyone with such needs, be it music-related or not, to contact him.
His daughter Anastasiia Duda is a very talented graphic designer, AI content maker and video editor. She has made four short films based on past articles and material in preparation for Liner Notes, bringing back to life such classical music legends as Otto Klemperer, Stanley Drucker, Harold Gomberg, Zlatko Balaković and others. Her YouTube page can be visited here, and her professional profile can be found on page 5 of this issue.
Rejoining us is the wonderful writer and illustrator Neale Osborne, who is our guide for three fascinating journeys. In “Rarissima” Neale surveys the early recordings of Debussy’s poème lyrique La Damoiselle élue. “The Curiosity Shop” features the remarkable German filmmaker Lotte Reiniger, a pioneer in “silhouette animation”, who left three Mozart-inspired shorts. Finally, we accompany Neale to the theater for screenings of Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortilèges and the 1993 Claude Sautet film “Un Coeur en Hiver”.
Also returning this quarter is writer Nicholas E. Limansky with profile of the legendary Italian tenor Francesco Merli, whose storied portrayals of Otello, Canio and Calaf are the stuff of legend. The always illuminating Roger Pines has elected to remain a castaway and who can blame him when he has Marilyn Horne’s “Souvenir of a Golden Era” Decca double album to keep him company – see this quarter’s “Desert Island Disc” on page 153.
Jeanne-Marie Darré is a pianist richly deserving of systematic re-issue and renewed appreciation. Sometimes called “Madame Saint-Saëns” for her close association with the French composer’s music. To wit, in this quarter’s “From the Archives” we re-visit her brilliant account of The Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor Op. 22, recorded for Pathé in 1948.
Spanish conductor Enrique Jordá is the subject of this quarter’s “Portraiture & Design” Department, specifically his 1950 LP pairing Turina’s La Procesión del RocÃo Op. 9 with “El Puerto” and “Triana” from Albéniz’s Iberia. Here, we owe a deep debt of gratitude to writer Peter Quantrill and producer Cyrus Meher-Homji OAM who generously allowed us to reprint the former’s liner notes to the Eloquence 2CD release of the conductor’s 1950-51 Decca recordings.
This year the Alto label celebrates its 20th year enriching the catalog with historical re-issues, expertly curated by A&R Product Manager Robin Vaughan. In addition to restoring unmissable historical material, Alto now makes its own recordings, with a particular emphasis on the Czech repertoire – their story is the subject of this quarter’s “Label Focus” and begins on page 127. Free Bird Music may not be known to you, but it is the best record shop in the Balkans, with an impressive stock of second-hand classical CDs and LPs, particularly of Eastern European pressings. Thankfully, they ship worldwide. Read more in this quarter’s “Shop Focus” on page 123.
In the Fall 2024 issue we looked back at Columbia Records’ budget label Odyssey. In “Soundings”, we now turn our attention to Decca’s “Ace of Clubs” series. Launched in the summer of 1958, Dec- ca hoped it would “trump” a burgeoning mail order market then dominated by two independents, Classics Club and World Record Club.
Finally, some “housekeeping” matters. Going forward, “Portraiture & Design” will be dropped. Every quarter we will continue profiling an artist or photographer who has contributed to the “art of cover art”, but keeping both is perhaps overkill on the subject of album cover art. In its place we will alert readers to recent historical releases of interest, department name TBD.
“Soundings” was meant to examine the many producers and sound engineers who have helped make recordings great, all the way back to the 78rpm era. However, this has proven to be extraordinarily difficult as aside from certain well-known figures such as Fred Gaisberg, Walter Legge and John Culshaw, the lives of these unsung heroes of the gramophone and LP are very poorly documented. There are some remarkable websites – e.g., recordingpioneers.com and soundofthehound.com – but even here, reconstructing a true biographical portrait is very difficult. Establishing the most basic facts of their lives – the years of their birth and death – is challenging, as is locating even a single photo of them.
Rather than abandon this endeavor, however, it will become a more ad hoc department, published whenever a profile has finally been assembled. Beginning with the Winter Issue, “Discographies” will now serve as a “stand-in” or “fallback” department. There are many interesting discographies online, some of which are somewhat “buried” and not easily discoverable via a simple online search. We will alert you to these.
“From the Archives” will now only feature recordings made during the 78rpm era. I believe it is very important to honor artists who have recently passed, but going forward only those musicians and composers who are more closely related to historical recordings will be included.
For the past four years we have usually offered 2 to 3 full-length articles (@ 2,500-5,000 words) as well the various recurring departments. Beginning with the Winter Issue, a more mixed format will prevail, with a greater number of shorter articles. The idea here is to offer you more topics of interest; thus, instead of 10 articles, long or short, we hope to offer 15-20. In 2026 we will get back on track in terms of our publishing schedule. Thanks for staying with us I hope this finds you well.
— Warm wishes, Joe Moore