| Teldec | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Parent company | Warner Music Group (formerlyTelefunken andDecca Records) |
| Founded | 1950; 75 years ago (1950) |
| Genre | Classical music (Early andBaroque music) |
| Country of origin | Germany |
| Location | Hamburg |
| Official website | www |
Teldec (Telefunken-Decca SchallplattenGmbH) is a Germanrecord label inHamburg, Germany. Today the label is a property ofWarner Music Group.
Teldec was a producer of (first) shellac and (later) vinyl records. The Teldec manufacturing facility was located inNortorf nearKiel in Germany. The company was founded in 1950 as a co-operation betweenTelefunken andDecca Records. The name Teldec is the result of taking the first three letters of both labels: Telefunken and Decca. Records manufactured by Teldec mostly were released under the Telefunken or Decca label, but normally these records contained no hint that they were made by Teldec. In 1983, Telefunken and Decca pulled out of Teldec and in 1988 Teldec was sold toTime Warner. In 1997, the remaining compact-disc production facility in Nortorf was to be closed by Time Warner, but after a management buyout, the new company OK Media, continued CD production. In 2001, after the merger of AOL & Time Warner, Teldec closed.
In the early 1970s, Teldec was acting for Telefunken in the development of a disc manufacturing technology for Telefunken's "TeD" video disc player TD1005, released in 1975. The Television Electronic Disc (TeD) system was more or less a predecessor of the more successful optical PhilipsLaserDisc video system, as the TeD system employed the idea of usingFM instead of AM for storing the video signal on a disc for the first time.
The TeD video-disc player used apiezo-electric pick-up cartridge with a diamond stylus, mechanically sampling thefrequency-modulated,PAL-encoded audio-video signal from thousands of concentric grooves, vertically recorded into the surface of a very thin, flexible vinyl disc. The disc was freely rotating on a thin cushion of air between the disc and a fixed plate at 1500rpm (25 Hz), the disc being stabilized only bycentrifugal force. The sampling frequency of the combined audio-video signal was about 2.7 MHz. Maximum video playing time was ten minutes on a 210 mm disc, amounting to about 15,000 concentric grooves on the disc, each storing two half-frame PAL-video-lines.
A technological spin-off from the short-lived TeD video system was Teldec'sDirect Metal Mastering technology, called DMM, for the manufacturing of vinyl records: Thecutting lathe engraves and impresses the audio signal (via Blumlein stereo cutting) in the copper-platedmother disk, instead of in the lacquer coating on an aluminium 'grandmother' disk. This bypasses the need to electroform a father disk, firstly, and reputed allowed better retention of the modulated signals in the groove due to the copper phase not possessing the strong elastic memory of the lacquer coating on traditional blank disks.
Teldec / Telefunken issued recordings via its own record label from the 1950s. Classical recordings included performances by theBamberg Symphony Orchestra,Berlin Symphony Orchestra,Berlin Philharmonic,Hamburg State Philharmonic Orchestra, and from elsewhere in Europe, such as the Orchestre symphonique de la Radiodiffusion Nationale Belge. The conductors under contract includedJoseph Keilberth,Artur Rother, Belgian conductorFranz André and the German electronic organist/pianistKlaus Wunderlich who recorded soloHammond organ recordings and earlyMoog synthesizer recordings (whilst recording for Teldec he earned 13 gold discs). The American violinistJoan Field recorded, for Telefunken, the violin concertos ofBruch,Dvorak,Mendelssohn,Mozart andSpohr. A project of the 1980s was the first recording of the original versions of the symphonies ofAnton Bruckner with theFrankfurt Radio Symphony conducted byEliahu Inbal.
A feature of the Teldec catalogue was its coverage ofearly music and promotion ofHistorically informed performances, which were marketed from 1958 under its own sub-label Das Alte Werk. The first significant recordings were byNikolaus Harnoncourt and hisConcentus Musicus Wien, then later also with other orchestras, who became one of the main artists of the label. Teldec's largest project in this area was the prize-winning complete recording ofBach cantatas, which were recorded from 1970–1989 jointly by theConcentus Musicus Wien conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and by theLeonhardt-Consort withGustav Leonhardt. Teldec did not however achieve the distinction of completing the first set of these works, losing to the rival series byHänssler Classic on conventional modern instruments byHelmuth Rilling. (This started later in 1975 but managed to meet Teldec's original 1985 Bach tercentary year deadline for completion).[1] Das Alte Werk also produced the first recordings of reconstructed versions ofMonteverdi's operasL'Orfeo,Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria andL'incoronazione di Poppea in aZurich Opera cycle under Harnoncourt. In the 1990s Das Alte Werk recorded a few newer artists such as the ensemblesTragicomedia andChanticleer, but effectively ceased new projects after Teldec's acquisition byWarner Classics.
