Angel Records
| Angel Records | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Founded | 1953 |
| Founder |
Dorle Soria Dario Soria |
| Defunct | 2006 |
| Status | Inactive |
| Genre |
Classical music Broadway |
| Country of origin | U.S. |
Angel Records was a record label founded by EMI in 1953. It specialised in classical music, but included an occasional operetta or Broadway score. The Angel mark was used by EMI, its predecessors, and affiliated companies since 1898. EMI's classical-music operations were sold to Warner Music Group in 2013. The label is currently inactive since 2006, dissolving and reassigning Angel Records' artists and catalogues into its parent label EMI Classics and musical theatre artists and catalogues into Capitol Records. EMI Classics was sold and absorbed into Warner Classics.
A recording angel is a traditional figure that watches over people, marking their actions on a tablet for future judgment. Artist Theodore Birnbaum devised a modified version of this image, depicting a cherub marking grooves into a phonograph disc with a quill. Beginning in 1898, the Gramophone Company in the United Kingdom used this angel as a trademark on its record labels and players, as did affiliated companies worldwide.
From 1909, Gramophone and related companies began replacing the angel with the famous trademark of a dog listening to a gramophone. The angel was retained in areas where the depiction of a dog was deemed offensive, and in countries such as the United States where the His Master's Voice (Nipper) trademark was controlled by RCA Victor.
In 1953 Gramophone successor EMI lost its U.S. distribution arrangement with Columbia Records, which had elected to make Philips Records distributor of U.S. Columbia recordings outside North America. In response, EMI established Angel Records in New York City under the direction of record producers Dorle Soria (December 14, 1900 – July 7, 2002) and her husband Dario Soria (May 21, 1912 – March 28, 1980). The couple concentrated on distributing EMI classical recordings in the U.S. market. They departed the label in 1957, having already accumulated a catalog of about 500 titles, when EMI merged Angel into its recently acquired Capitol Records subsidiary and moved from imported discs to U.S. production. However, Angel recordings such as Sir Thomas Beecham's 1957 performance of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, made in England in stereo with the Royal Philharmonic, were still imported to the U.S.
...
Wikipedia