Talk:Arthur Rubinstein discography

Rubinstein Collection

A note on the release dates of the Rubinstein Collection. The boxed set was released in 1999, but the individual volumes were released on various dates starting in 2000. I think it's best to keep the release date as 1999 since the volumes were numbered in the box.THD3 (talk) 14:51, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree with your reasoning - but see my comments below. Milkunderwood (talk) 07:15, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

some comments and suggestions

To THD3 and Etincelles:

1) About his name: it's my understanding (from reading liner notes somewhere) that while using "Artur" as his professional name, at the urging of Sol Hurok, Rubinstein in his private life preferred "Arthur". I think this is more-or-less referred to on his main biography page, but I think it wouldn't hurt to also put a little note here on the discography page as well, just to explain why all of his recordings issued prior to RCA's release of the Collection were uniformly under "Artur" rather than the "Arthur" in the page's title. (Or, since so far you're almost exclusively referring to the Collection, which does use "Arthur", maybe it doesn't matter after all.)

2) About dates and other info: RCA released Rubinstein recordings multiple times under different catalog entries, and I personally don't see any point at all in providing the supposed release dates of the Collection, whether it's 1999 or 2000.

What anyone would want to know is the recording date, not the re-re-rerelease date of any specific reissue. And the actual recording dates (including month and date if ascertainable) of each separate performance, rather than a date spread for everything that's on any given disc.

Also the actual names of the individual performers in for instance the piano quartets, rather than just saying "members of the Guarneri Quartet". And, where ascertainable, the recording venue - what recording studio or concert hall? - or at least what city? If you look at a disc's liner notes much or all of this information will usually be provided.

For instance, the Brahms G minor quartet No. 1, Op. 25, and the C minor quartet No. 3, Op. 60, were together recorded "December 27-30, 1967" with no more specificity of date provided on RCA Victor Gold Seal 5677-2-RG, (c) & (P)1988, nor is the venue specified, but these notes do tell you that John Dalley was the violinist on #1, while Arnold Steinhardt was violinist on #3.

Collection Vol 74 tells you that the Brahms A major quartet No. 2, Op. 26, was recorded on December 27, 1967, with Steinhardt on violin, in Webster Hall, New York City. Together with the Brahms on Vol 74 is the Faure C minor quartet No. 1, Op. 15, which was recorded December 28, 1970, with Dalley on violin, in RCA Studio A, New York City. Now obviously you can guess that the Op. 25 and Op. 60 were also recorded in Webster Hall, but you have no authority for making such an assertion, and so should not.

This is the kind of important information people would want; the (c) or (P) date is pretty irrelevant unless you're preparing a discography for RCA rather than for Rubinstein.

I assume that between the two of you (you appear to be the only contributors to this page) there must be a number of CDs available for checking and finding this kind of information.

For two other discography pages, vastly different from each other and each from this Rubinstein page, that you might want to look at for comparison (both of which I've contributed to, but neither of which I set up or organized), try Budapest_String_Quartet#Recordings and La_traviata_discography. You might pick up some ideas from one or the other.

3) It appears that your footnote #2 in the Overview section may be in the wrong place, if all but your own final sentence is taken from that one source. In that case it seems more appropriate to move your ref to follow the word broadcasts. But it seems that what you really need is page references for each separate statement (sentence), especially if your source text has all this various info on different pages. I think that would be the proper way to do it. I haven't looked up the exact correct form, but it would be something like Ibid., p. 250. etc.

On the other hand, I wonder if you really need to ref each separate "Volume" in the Collection separately, rather than putting a note about the Collection in your "This discography ..." sentence, and just putting a single ref there.

4) It occurs to me that the terms "Album" and "Albums" really refer more properly to popular music than to classical - it's a little jarring here in this context. I think I would change that to Compact Discs or some such.
Milkunderwood (talk) 06:58, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Response:

• 1) All CDs from 1999 onward have been released with his name spelled as Arthur. The original recordings were released with the Artur spelling from 1937 onward, and many European releases used the Arthur spelling. (I once saw a 78RPM issued in Spain that billed Rubinstein as Arturo.) I will ensure there is a mention to the spelling of his name as it appeared on recordings over the years.
• 2) The release date refers to the compilation in question, not the original recording. The year(s) of recording is listed in the third column. Since the recordings have been recompiled and resquenced several times, it would be cumbersome to list the original album contents - and very hard to verify.
• 3)I have considered a single reference in place of multiple ones, but some Wikipedians insist on individual references so I decided to err on the side of more references. Vis-a-vis the Budapest page: that's part of an overall page about the group. The problem here is that Rubinstein recorded a lot of short works - if we stick to that format, we would have do have a line for each of the 51 Chopin mazurkas Rubinstein recorded, and then list each of his three (or more) recordings.
• 4)"Album" is a throwback to the 78RPM days (actually, it really goes all the way back to printed music, when short compositions were referred to as "Album Leaves"), when customers would purchase several discs at a time. I've heard album used for CDs as well, back to when I worked in a Classical record store. We could change it to CDs, but several volumes of the Collection are multi-CD compilations.THD3 (talk) 19:27, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

By the way, the Arthur/Artur thing brings up an interesting point. Sony is about to reissue (again) Rubinstein entire output as part of their Original Album Collection, which uses the original covers. But will they stick with Artur, or will they alter the covers and add the H? Inquiring minds want to know!THD3 (talk) 20:21, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughtful response of last week. I wasn't ignoring it, but coincidentally had just started work on an alternative arrangement in my sandbox, as I've now posted on your talk page to direct you to. I hope you'll take the opportunity to look at what I have there, and give your honest opinion. I've definitely bitten off more than I can chew.

I had no idea about Sony - Columbia and RCA used to be the fiercest rivals. For many years now I've had a real thing about the general incompetence and sh!tty attitude Sony has always taken concerning the priceless Columbia catalog they've mostly been just sitting on for decades. They really have no idea what they're doing. They chop stuff up into pieces and toss random movements from different pieces together - not just classical, but also things like Burl Ives. They'll put out a nice collection and then quickly withdraw it again, substituting it with a "collection" that makes no sense at all. The worst I've ever seen is what is supposed to be a reprint of the old LPs of the Budapest String Quartet's Brahms with Serkin in the quintet - here they actually cut off the last quarter of the Op. 67 third movement for no reason at all. They came to what sounded like a pretty good stopping point, did a quick fadeout, and just cut it off. But you can't just boycott them, because they own all that good stuff. There's no telling what they might do with Rubinstein, but I certainly wouldn't rely on the accuracy of anything at all that they put out. Milkunderwood (talk) 08:15, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Edit: Check out how I handled the Mazurkas. I think this works pretty well. Milkunderwood (talk) 08:24, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Sony is reissuing the complete recordings again for less than 1/3 the price of the 1999 box - and it will include three CDs of previously unissued material! I've checked photos, they will call it the Arthur Rubinstein Original Album Collection. THD3 (talk) 13:14, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Here's another example of Sony's unreliability that I've just now run across: they label their 1971 Grammy-winning Istomin-Stern-Rose release of Beethoven Piano Trio Op. 1 No. 3 in C minor as being in G major. (They are also unique in marking the 1st movement as "Allegro con brio (quasi tranquillo)". What can that mean? I think they made it up out of thin air; no one else has this description.) I'm not aware of a sloppier and more untrustworthy label. They just keep on doing this kind of stuff. Especially if you decide to go for one of their discount sets you ought to treat it with extreme caution. Hopefully they won't chop up any of the transfers like with the Brahms Op. 67 quartet. There was plenty of extra room on that disc, but here they will be squeezing as much onto as few discs as they can. You'll want to crosscheck track timings against your RCA, and the actual timings against what they say. Milkunderwood (talk) 07:34, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Re Sony, I've just now run across your April comment at the Andre Watts page - this is exactly why I truly detest those uncomprehending suits who run that place. Milkunderwood (talk) 07:04, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Please note than this list refers only to the recordings issued in a CD box or a collection of compact discs. A lot of recordings are not referenced here. Just one example, I am absolutely sure to have already seen a record with as cover title : Rubinstein plays Rubinstein, and this article do mention only of the Waltz Caprice ! — Nicolas ANCEAU

Suggested alternative table layout

In my sandbox I have set up a suggested alternative layout for the table of Rubinstein's discography. Visitors are welcome to my Rubinstein sandbox, and to leave (helpful) comments or edits. The table there now contains only a number of sample entries, to give an idea of how I would propose to handle several different situations.

As THD3 and I have discussed in the section preceding this one, I feel that the existing layout of the discography table leaves much to be desired. Also, it is essentially a table merely of RCA's 1999 Rubinstein Collection, with a very few additional releases listed.

• Obviously a considerable amount of time and work has been put into the construction of this present table. My concern is that the layout which was initially set up was less than ideal, and I have not been able to think of any convenient way that it might be rearranged.
• In two discussions of this discography, first here and then here, there was a general consensus among participants in WikiProject Classical music that the original date of recording is much more important and consequential than a publisher's date of issue (or one of multiple reissues).
• THD3 has understandably expressed concern that users will want to be able to view the table by discs, to see the full contents of each disc. My suggested alternative table easily does just that, by sorting on its last column, while still emphasizing the importance of actual recording dates in my second column.

• Note that although this present discography is also presented as a sortable table, virtually all entries in the first column are 1999, and RCA Red Seal (each separately linked) in the last column, both of which seem less than useful.
• Further, while the third column occasionally presents a specific year (but not the actual date, or venue) of recording, more frequently only a range of years is shown, if any at all. Date information could be added later, but the present layout of the table seems not to conveniently allow for anything more specific than a single year or range of dates in its third column for individual compositions.

• In my suggested alternative table layout I've provided examples of:
  • two different RCA releases of a recording;
  • releases containing multiple recordings and recording sessions; and
  • Rubinstein's work with various accompanists.
• I've also concentrated on Chopin to display examples of multiple works in a single genre, such as the Mazurkas, Nocturnes, Polonaises and Waltzes.
• At the end of the table is an example of a live recital of miscellaneous pieces by different composers.
• I provide full publication data with each entry, but give links to each issuer only once, in a reference footnote.
  

Any comments or suggestions posted there will be very welcome.
Milkunderwood (talk) 04:50, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

I think your table would be a useful addition to the article. However, I note that in your table, a user can't easily find all the works in a particular CD issue (i.e., in one "minibox" of the table). The frequency of the 1999 Rubinstein Collection in the original table is simply because it's the most easily verifiable, and the other issues (from RCA/BMG) are merely duplication. But information can certainly be added to both tables. I remain opposed to the deletion of the existing table.THD3 (talk) 15:28, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

I take it you've already tried sorting my (very incomplete) table by the fourth column? This column does sort to easily display the complete contents of a disc, but as you say, it's true that they do not collapse into a single "minibox". Did you have any other observations concerning either the table itself, or my discussion that follows below it?

The most obvious problem with mine is that filling it out to bring it anywhere near being ready to post would take a humongous amount of time and tedious effort. And I can certainly understand your opposition to removal of your table, on which you've already devoted so much time and effort. Adjoining the two tables into a single article would surely make it huge and unwieldy, especially since mine would eventually be many times the length of yours, just by itself. I think you've suggested that the two tables might better be posted as separate articles.

In the meantime, let's see whether any other Wikipedia users might pipe up - if they even come to this talk page and find the link to my sandbox effort - so that we might get a more disinterested viewpoint on the matter. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm very hesitant to proceed with the work involved in continuing mine without having received some amount of encouraging feedback.

I already have all of the needed detailed information - it's all easily available from the three sources I've referenced, particularly the Hunt book, and probably there are additional sources I haven't bothered to look for. It's just a question of typing all of this stuff into WP's table format. I may play with expanding it in a rather desultory fashion (and certainly would welcome any assistance on the project that might be forthcoming) but obviously there's no point to devoting all that time for it to come to naught. Milkunderwood (talk) 17:26, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Maybe it's a naive question, but why not have both tables? Article length doesn't seem to be much of an issue anymore (compared to, say, 2005). You could always do a separate article with the other format; at worst, some wiki-pedant would AfD it, and it would be merged back (I'd vote keep). The encyclopedic value of either table is high, and obvious. This is the body of work of one of the most significant performing artists of the 20th century, not a list of ephemera. Easy to justify the extra effort. Just my opinion, but then I'm an awful highbrow.  :) Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 00:14, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Favorite was afaik german record label

http://de.wiki.x.io/wiki/Favorite-Record

says: founded in Linden near Hannover in 1904; theyx had a dependance in Wien; 1912 transformed to "Favorite Record AG" ; 1913 sold to Carl Lindström.

I have not found any hints that a polish company producing or selling "Płyta gramofonowa" (polish word for Gramophone record named "Favorit" or "Favorite" existed. --Neun-x (talk) 10:16, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

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• AR CD Selection.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 03:06, 5 April 2019 (UTC)