维克多红色印章 RCA Victor Red Seal
RCA Victor Red Seal
厂牌资料
RCA Red Sealis aclassical musiclabel whose origin dates to 1902 and is currently owned bySony Music Entertainment.
History
The use of a distinctive red label for premium-priced records made by top-tier artists was a marketing strategy suggested by theGramophone Company's agent inSt. Petersburg, Russia, where the first "Gramophone Record Red Seal" discs were issued in late 1901 or early 1902.Later in 1902 the practice was adopted by the home office in theUnited Kingdom, which preferred to refer to the records as "Red Labels", and by itsUnited Statesaffiliate, theVictor Talking Machine Company, in 1903. Led by the great Italian tenorEnrico Caruso, then just at the beginning of his worldwide fame, Victor Red Seal records changed the public's valuation of recorded music. Caruso's first records, made by the Gramophone Company in Milan, Italy in 1902, earned prestige as well as profits for the company and its affiliates. Five of Caruso's Milan records were issued by Victor on the Red Seal label in the United States in March, 1903 and soon other famousoperastars and classical instrumentalists were attracted to the studios of both Victor and the Gramophone Company, consolidating the positions of these firms as the market leaders in the field of serious music by famous artists.
Early acoustical (non-electrical) recordings could be a surprisingly good medium for capturing the sound of singing voices, male voices especially, but while acceptable solo piano and violin recordings could be made, the acoustical process typically yielded only a flat, muffled, tinny echo of a symphony orchestra. The introduction ofelectrical recording(or "orthophonic recording", as Victor termed its version of the process) in 1925 allowed reproduction of instrumental and orchestral music with greatly improved fidelity. In 1929, theRadio Corporation of Americapurchased the Victor Talking Machine Company, thereafter becoming RCA Victor and, in 1968,RCA Records.
RCA Victor's Red Seal series continued its pre-eminence from the 1930s through the 1950s due in large part to the recordings of three of the leading conductors of the time,Serge Koussevitzky,Leopold Stokowski, andArturo Toscanini. Nearly all of Toscanini's recordings were issued on the Red Seal label, most of them with theNBC Symphony Orchestra(NBCwas an RCA subsidiary until 1986). ConductorArthur Fiedlerand theBoston Pops Orchestraspent nearly 35 years with RCA Victor and made many best-selling Red Seal recordings. Stokowski and thePhiladelphia Orchestramade Red Seal records exclusively from 1917 until 1940. Stokowski would continue to make many other Red Seal recordings with various orchestras, sporadically until 1975.Eugene Ormandymade his first recordings with theMinneapolis Symphony Orchestrain 1934 and with the Philadelphia Orchestra beginning in 1936. Ormandy and the Philadelphians returned to RCA Victor in 1968, after spending 23 years (1944–67) withColumbia Records. Though best-known for his many recordings for Columbia andDeutsche Grammophon,Leonard Bernsteinmade his first recordings for RCA Victor.
In 1950, RCA Victor began issuing vinylLPs(originally introduced byColumbia Recordsin 1948), because they were losing artists and sales due to the company's resistance to adopting the new format.[3]In 1954, RCA Victor began experimenting withstereophonicrecording. The first RCA Victor "Stereo Orthophonic" reel to reel tapes were issued in 1955. When stereo LP records first appeared in 1958, RCA Victor introduced their highly regarded "Living Stereo" recordings. During this period RCA was consistently seen as producing some of the finest-sounding recordings then available.
In 1968, RCA introduced a modern logo, de-emphasized the Victor name and "His Master's Voice" trademarks, and the label came to be known as "RCA Red Seal". AfterGeneral Electricabsorbed RCA in 1986 and sold its interest in the record division to theBertelsmann Music Group, the Victor name was revived so the label once again became "RCA Victor Red Seal" for several years before eventually de-emphasizing the Victor and "His Master's Voice" trademarks again, and reverting to "RCA Red Seal" in the early 2000s due to the worldwide fragmented ownership of the "His Master's Voice" trademark.