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Telefunken Record Label?

Wigwam Jones

Wigwam Jones

Caesar non supra grammati
I came across a thrift store LP recently, cleaned it up, and I'm playing it now. Unfortunately, there is a quite a bit of crackle; due, I suppose to the way it was stored, sans liner. But I may be able to rescue it in Audacity, we'll see.

It's "Waltzes of Johann Strauss," Joseph Keilberth conducting the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, Telefunken TCS 18018. I'm not familiar with Telefunken as a record label. This is a stereo release; although I'm not hearing a lot of channel separation here. Any thoughts on this label in terms of quality, or this particular release? I know there are a few classical fans here on AK who know the older releases.
 
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Telefunken became TELDEC (Telefunken+Decca). I have a lot of their LPs (and CDs) in their Das Alte Werke line of pre-Classical 'Classical' music.

It's a great label.
 
pmsummer said:
Telefunken became TELDEC (Telefunken+Decca). I have a lot of their LPs (and CDs) in their Das Alte Werke line of pre-Classical 'Classical' music.

It's a great label.
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Thanks! This one is from 1959, according to Billboard magazine. I hope I can clean it up OK, I'm liking what I'm hearing, but there are so many quiet passages, and a lot of very small crackle in the background.
 
Wigwam Jones said:
Thanks! This one is from 1959, according to Billboard magazine. I hope I can clean it up OK, I'm liking what I'm hearing, but there are so many quiet passages, and a lot of very small crackle in the background.
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Sounds like a job for TiteBond II!
 
I've got some Telefunken LPs. Hildegard Knef and maybe a Heino or two. I think I also have a Siw Malmkvist on that label.
 
The complete Bach cantatas Harnoncourt/Leonhardt release was started on Teldec Das Alte Werk.

Harnoncourt also released BWV 244 St Matthew Passion - the Mount Everest of classical music, and BWV 232 Mass in b minor, the K2 of classical music - on Telefunken, thus this label cannot be that bad.
 
pmsummer said:
Sounds like a job for TiteBond II!
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It's already been given the rub-a-dub treatment in the sink with dish soap and a paint pad, and I suspect it's as clean as it's going to get. However, that's a reasonable suggestion; I never tried the glue treatment, and given that this is still somewhat on the unacceptable range with crackles (but not scratches), it would be interesting to see if the glue treatment makes any difference. I may try that at some point, thank you for the suggestion.
 
Wally Swift said:
I've got some Telefunken LPs. Hildegard Knef and maybe a Heino or two. I think I also have a Siw Malmkvist on that label.
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You are right. A lot of Schlager, pop and rock was released in the seventies on Telefunken, not only classical music. But Siw was on Metronome!

One of my favourite German Rock musicians, Udo Lindenberg, was also part of the catalogue.

By the way, my oldest "Telefunken Musikus" 78 rpm record is some 80 years old.
 
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HarmanKardon said:
The complete Bach cantatas Harnoncourt/Leonhardt release was started on Teldec Das Alte Werk.

Harnoncourt also released BWV 244 St Matthew Passion - the Mount Everest of classical music, and BWV 232 Mass in b minor, the K2 of classical music - on Telefunken, thus this label cannot be that bad.
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I'm not that knowledgeable with classical music, just learning (at my age, a bit late, but better late than never). Good information, thank you.
 
One of my favorite LPs of Richard Strauss´ music is a Telefunken LP from the early 60´s (before the fusion with Decca took place):

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Wigwam Jones said:
I'm working on the German part. My mom's family are from Pomerania. Weidemann. My grandmother spoke 'HachtDeutsch' (as I recall my mom calling it) and some English.
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Many AK members actually with German roots, that is why I started the "German words in English and American language" thread, which makes a lot of fun and is interesting and entertaining!

:)
 
HarmanKardon said:
Many AK members actually with German roots, that is why I started the "German words in English and American language" thread, which makes a lot of fun and is interesting and entertaining!

:)
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I can often understand read or spoken German, or at least puzzle it out. I don't think I'm special, I think German is enough like English that the common parts make sense. Sentence structure is a big different, some words are absurdly long, geselgemeinshaft kind of stuff, but in general, German seems not that hard to grasp. Not like Russian or Chinese.

FYI, I entered the album I spoke of in Discogs:

http://www.discogs.com/Joseph-Keilb...tra-Waltzes-Of-Johann-Strauss/release/4142025
 
HarmanKardon said:
Does anybody know whether the fusion with Decca influenced the sound quality of the label?

:scratch2:
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No impact. They had been siblings since the 1950s

Wikipedia says...
Teldec was a major German producer of (first) shellac and (later) vinyl records. The Teldec manufacturing facility was located in Nortorf near Kiel in Germany. The company was founded 1950 as a cooperation between Telefunken and Decca 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 rectracted from their engagement in vinyl record production and Teldec was sold to Time Warner.

A focus in the catalog of the Teldec was the field of early music and historical performance practice, which were marketed from 1958 under its own sub-label Das Alte Werk. The first significant recordings were by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and his Concentus 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 of Bach cantatas, which were recorded from 1970 to 1989 jointly by the Concentus Musicus Wien conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and by the Leonhardt Consort with Gustav Leonhardt.
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Back when I was "that" strange teenager that actually like classical music Telefunken was one of the record labels I looked for, along with Angel Records, and Angel's sister label Seraphim Records. With the limited knowledge I had at the time these seem to be the best.
 
TCS 18018 sounds like it is an American mastering and pressing of a Telefunken issue originating in Germany.

Telefunken in the USA, during the late 1950s through the 1960s, was issued by the Decca Record Co. (UK) whose American subsidiary was better known as London Records. While most London classical issues were imports from the UK of superlative quality, with London labeling and London numbers (at the time, Decca USA was a separate company), most other London products such as their pop records, the budget classical Richmond line and the Telefunkens, were pressed in the USA, and those pressings were on inferior vinyl, often tending to be noisy. Inside the cardboard jacket, they came in paper sleeves which seemed to have been resurrected from a former life as flour sacks.

I have owned from brand new (that's longer ago than I want to think about), Telefunken TCS 18003, the Beethoven Symphony No. 3, the Hamburg State Philharmonic conducted by Joseph Keilberth. It is a fine performance but the constant surface noise was so annoying that it was difficult to listen to it all the way through. After many, many years of playing it with the latest audiophile super cartridges that would track at a minuscule weight, I finally had at it with a Stanton 500, with a genuine Stanton spherical stylus in white, marked only "DJ." It was specified at 2-5 grams. I washed the record, then gave it all five grams (with a 0.7 mil spherical there is no fear of record wear) and the surface noise was lessened by about 80%; meanwhile the amount of junk that the stylus dug up was astounding. I repeated the washing and played the second side, the same way with the same result. A second playthrough of the whole record dug out even more junk. Now, finally, it plays quietly.
 
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