Over the past 25 years Beulah has
received many
acclaimations.
"The Beulah
record label has always been one of the most idiosyncratic, and
therefore perhaps most interesting, of reissue marques. While the basic
character of Beulah remains the same as in its Compact Disc days, the
range of its present catalogue, driven now by the ease of downloading,
has been extended in remarkable fashion. Browsing the Beulah catalogue
is now rather like being in a 78rpm record shop: there are plenty of
recordings of short pieces available to whet your appetite for either
repertoire or artist, while at the same time there are numerous full
length works available if you wish to consolidate your collection with,
for instance, major symphonies. All of Beulah's transfers, as might be
expected of a distinguished reissue label, are of very high quality."
David Patmore writing in Classical
Recordings Quarterly
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Beulah at 25
It was August 1993 when the first
three Beulah compact
discs appeared in the record shops.
The first releases were :-
1PD1
Live at the Crystal Palace - recordings made inside
London’s Crystal Palace in the ten years
before it burnt down in November 1936.
1PD2
Crystal Palace Champions - Winners of the National
Brass Band Championships held in the Crystal Palace
1PD3
Sir Henry’s Themes and Variations - recordings made
by the founder of the Proms, Sir Henry
Wood, and the Queen’s Hall Orchestra.
In those days record companies
showed little interest in
releasing their mono recordings from
the 1950s.
Beulah released the Sibelius
Symphonies recorded for
Decca by Anthony
Collins between 1951 and 1955. This was Beulah’s first success,
especially in the USA.
The
Decca recordings of violinist Alfredo Campoli were
released on 4 compact discs. These
found a market in Hong Kong and Japan.
Beulah's
first release aimed at the French market came
in 1996 with an album of Eduard
van Beinum conducting Berlioz.
In 2009 Beualh issued
The World of Dennis Brain
including
tracks never previously released. It was to be Beulah’s last compact
disc release.
From 2010 onwards Beulah was to
become a download and
streaming only label. At that time the main downloading site was
iTunes. Sales were initially modest but it did enable us to release
many more albums as we no longer needed to hold physical stock.
Now streaming , principally at
Spotify, out ranks
downloads. Beulah has over 300 albums available in classical, jazz,
light music, folk, brass and military genres.
To mark Beulah’s first 25
years we have released a
a celebratory album that can be downloaded or streamed in full 16bit
44.1kHZ from
New for December
Many music lovers miss the sound
from vinyl pressings.
Many others have yet to discover how pleasant the sound can be.
Most of our albums are mastered from vinyl LP pressings and earlier
recordings (before 1953) from 78 rpm discs. It is our ability to
recreate, in the digital age, the sound from the disc era that many of
our customers find most enjoyable.
Unlike modern digital recordings
tracks in our
albums do contain some distortion, and the occasional surface noises,
but for many listeners these "defects" are soon forgotten.
Our albums are available from
many download and
streaming sites.
We highly
recommend downloading from where you can download or stream in high quality, for
the
same price as iTunes medium quality.
New albums
What the Critics Say
"Though I enjoyed hearing Paray’s recordings,
ultimately if you are looking for Schumann recordings of this vintage
my preferences lie with Bernstein and Szell, both still sounding well.
Not quite one of the many great successes of Beulah, then.
"
Brian Wilson at MUSICWEB
INTERNATIONAL where you can read the full review
" Some of those manifold great successes of the
Beulah
catalogue are contained on a special release: Beulah at
25. It’s that many years since the release of their first
CDs, some of them still available but mostly subsumed
into the downloads which are still being produced
regularly. Of course, a single CD-length
offering can’t possibly contain all the goodies –
surprisingly there’s nothing from the Anthony Collins
Sibelius symphony recordings with the LSO,
abandoned by Decca despite their being the chosen
versions of my university friends on Ace of Clubs. Though Decca have
now rescued them on
their Australian Eloquence label, the 4-CD Beulah box
set is well worth having (14PD8 – review
– review
of earlier separate releases). So, too, is the CD of shorter Sibelius
works in performances directed by Collins and Eduard van Beinum (6PD8).
I must also mention Beulah’s release of Pierre Monteux’s 1958 account
of the Sibelius Second Symphony with the LSO (with Violin Concerto –
Jan Damen and Eduard van Beinum, 1953 – and Lemminkäinen’s Return –
Thomas Jensen, 1953) my Reissue
of the Month in 2013. "
Brian Wilson at MUSICWEB
INTERNATIONAL where you can read the full review
RAF 100
The Royal Air Force
was formed on 1 April 1918. By the
second world war it had massively expanded so in 1941 the Air Ministry
sent a set of records to every RAF station entitled Music
for
Service Occasions.
Read
extensive notes for this album
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