Columbia Masterworks Records was a record label

Record label

In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...

 started in 1927

1927 in music

-Events:* January 8 - Alban Berg's Lyric Suite is premiered in Vienna.* April 21 - Electric re-recording of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue by Paul Whiteman's Orchestra directed by Nathaniel Shilkret, with Gershwin at the piano....

 by Columbia Records

Columbia Records

Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...

.http://www.discogs.com/label/CBS+Masterworks

It was intended for releases of classical music

Classical music

Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...

 and artists, as opposed to popular music, which bore the regular Columbia logo. Masterworks Records' first release, in 1927, was a complete performance of the Symphony No. 1

Symphony No. 1 (Brahms)

The Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68, is a symphony written by Johannes Brahms. Brahms spent at least fourteen years completing this work, whose sketches date from 1854. Brahms himself declared that the symphony, from sketches to finishing touches, took 21 years, from 1855 to 1876...

 by Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene...

, conducted by Felix Weingartner

Felix Weingartner

Paul Felix von Weingartner, Edler von Münzberg was an Austrian conductor, composer and pianist.-Biography:...

. Under the leadership of its president Goddard Lieberson

Goddard Lieberson

Goddard Lieberson was the president of Columbia Records from 1956 to 1971, and from 1973 to 1975. He was also a composer, and studied with George Frederick McKay, at the University of Washington, Seattle....

, who later added the rest of the Columbia label to his portfolio, a great many notable classical artists made contributions to the Columbia Masterworks library, such as the conductors Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...

, Eugene Ormandy

Eugene Ormandy

Eugene Ormandy was a Hungarian-born conductor and violinist.-Early life:Born Jenő Blau in Budapest, Hungary, Ormandy began studying violin at the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music at the age of five...

 and George Szell

George Szell

George Szell , originally György Széll, György Endre Szél, or Georg Szell, was a Hungarian-born American conductor and composer...

, the pianists Vladimir Horowitz

Vladimir Horowitz

Vladimir Samoylovich Horowitz    was a Russian-American classical virtuoso pianist and minor composer. His technique and use of tone color and the excitement of his playing were legendary. He is widely considered one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century.-Life and early...

, Walter Gieseking

Walter Gieseking

Walter Wilhelm Gieseking was a French-born German pianist and composer.-Biography:Born in Lyon, France, the son of a German doctor and lepidopterist, Gieseking first started playing the piano at the age of four, but without formal instruction...

 and Oscar Levant

Oscar Levant

Oscar Levant was an American pianist, composer, author, comedian, and actor. He was more famous for his mordant character and witticisms, on the radio and in movies and television, than for his music.-Life and career:...

 and the organist E. Power Biggs

E. Power Biggs

Edward George Power Biggs , more familiarly known as E. Power Biggs, was a British-born American concert organist and recording artist.-Biography:...

. The composers Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...

 and Igor Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....

 also appeared conducting their own works.

In addition to classical music, Columbia Records also issued Broadway albums, soundtrack album

Soundtrack album

A soundtrack album is any album that incorporates music directly recorded from the soundtrack of a particular feature film or television program. In some cases, not all the tracks from the movie are included in the album; however there are rare cases of songs in the trailers that do not appear in...

s, and spoken-word recordings under the Masterworks name. The first wildly-successful spoken word album

Spoken word album

A spoken word album was a record album that did not consist mainly of music or songs, but of spoken material. It could be said to be the ancestor of today's audiobook format...

 was a 1948 Masterworks entry, the first I Can Hear It Now album, edited by Edward R. Murrow

Edward R. Murrow

Edward Roscoe Murrow, KBE was an American broadcast journalist. He first came to prominence with a series of radio news broadcasts during World War II, which were followed by millions of listeners in the United States and Canada.Fellow journalists Eric Sevareid, Ed Bliss, and Alexander Kendrick...

 and Fred W. Friendly

Fred W. Friendly

Fred W. Friendly was a president of CBS News and the creator, along with Edward R. Murrow, of the documentary television program See It Now...

 and supervised by former CBS staffer J.G. Gude. The album would lead to three sequels, the Hear It Now program on the CBS Radio Network

CBS Radio Network

The CBS Radio Network provides news, sports and other programming to more than 1,000 radio stations throughout the United States. The network is owned by CBS Corporation, and operated by CBS Radio ....

 in 1950 and the CBS-TV successor, See It Now

See It Now

See It Now is an American newsmagazine and documentary series broadcast by CBS from 1951 to 1958. It was created by Edward R. Murrow and Fred W. Friendly, Murrow being the host of the show. From 1952 to 1957, See It Now won four Emmy Awards and was nominated three times...

, in 1951. Columbia Masterworks was also the first recording company to release an album of an entire stage production - the record-breaking 1943 Broadway revival of Shakespeare's Othello

Othello

The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1603, and based on the Italian short story "Un Capitano Moro" by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565...

, starring Paul Robeson

Paul Robeson

Paul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...

, José Ferrer

José Ferrer

José Vicente Ferrer de Otero y Cintrón , best known as José Ferrer, was a Puerto Rican actor, as well as a theater and film director...

, and Uta Hagen

Uta Hagen

Uta Thyra Hagen was a German-born American actress and drama teacher. She originated the role of Martha in the 1963 Broadway premiere of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee...

. This was released first as a multi-record 78-RPM album and afterwards as a 3-LP set. Many years later, in 1962, Columbia Masterworks would release a 4-LP album of the complete Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a play by Edward Albee that opened on Broadway at the Billy Rose Theater on October 13, 1962. The original cast featured Uta Hagen as Martha, Arthur Hill as George, Melinda Dillon as Honey and George Grizzard as Nick. It was directed by Alan Schneider...

, starring its original Broadway cast: Uta Hagen, Arthur Hill

Arthur Hill (actor)

Arthur Edward Spence Hill was a Canadian actor best known for appearances in British and American theater, movies and television...

, George Grizzard

George Grizzard

George Cooper Grizzard, Jr. was an American actor of film and stage. He appeared in more than 40 films, dozens of television programs and a number of Broadway plays.-Life and career:...

, and Melinda Dillon

Melinda Dillon

Melinda Rose Dillon is an American actress, perhaps best known for her roles in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the holiday classic A Christmas Story.-Early life and career:...

. And in 1964, Columbia Masterworks would release a complete album of the 1964 Broadway revival of Hamlet

Hamlet

The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...

, starring Richard Burton

Richard Burton

Richard Burton, CBE was a Welsh actor. He was nominated seven times for an Academy Award, six of which were for Best Actor in a Leading Role , and was a recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe and Tony Awards for Best Actor. Although never trained as an actor, Burton was, at one time, the highest-paid...

 and directed by John Gielgud

John Gielgud

Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...

 - the longest-running Hamlet in Broadway history to date.

Columbia Masterworks' most successful Broadway album was the original cast recording of My Fair Lady

My Fair Lady

My Fair Lady is a musical based upon George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe...

, (1956) starring Rex Harrison

Rex Harrison

Sir Reginald Carey “Rex” Harrison was an English actor of stage and screen. Harrison won an Academy Award and two Tony Awards.-Youth and stage career:...

, Julie Andrews

Julie Andrews

Dame Julia Elizabeth Andrews, DBE is an English film and stage actress, singer, and author. She is the recipient of Golden Globe, Emmy, Grammy, BAFTA, People's Choice Award, Theatre World Award, Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award honors...

, Stanley Holloway

Stanley Holloway

Stanley Augustus Holloway, OBE was an English stage and film actor, comedian, singer, poet and monologist. He was famous for his comic and character roles on stage and screen, especially that of Alfred P. Doolittle in My Fair Lady...

, and Robert Coote

Robert Coote

Robert Coote was an English actor. He played aristocrats or British military types in many films, and created the role of Colonel Hugh Pickering in the long-running original Broadway production of My Fair Lady.-Biography:Coote was educated at Hurstpierpoint College in Sussex...

. This first album was issued only in mono, but the first stereo recording of My Fair Lady, featuring the same four stars, this time with the London cast, followed in 1959. And in 1964, Columbia Masterworks issued the film soundtrack album of the show, starring Rex Harrison

Rex Harrison

Sir Reginald Carey “Rex” Harrison was an English actor of stage and screen. Harrison won an Academy Award and two Tony Awards.-Youth and stage career:...

 and Audrey Hepburn

Audrey Hepburn

Audrey Hepburn was a British actress and humanitarian. Although modest about her acting ability, Hepburn remains one of the world's most famous actresses of all time, remembered as a film and fashion icon of the twentieth century...

's "singing voice", Marni Nixon

Marni Nixon

Marni Nixon is an American soprano and playback singer for featured actresses in movie musicals. She has also spent much of her career performing in concerts with major symphony orchestras around the world and in operas and musicals throughout the United States.-Biography:Born Margaret Nixon...

. The most successful film soundtrack release on Columbia Masterworks was The Graduate in 1967, featuring the music of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, then the best-selling pop music act on the roster of the parent Columbia label. Partly as a result of the immense popularity of this release, Columbia Masterworks published a series of soundtrack albums involving films that starred Dustin Hoffman

Dustin Hoffman

Dustin Lee Hoffman is an American actor with a career in film, television, and theatre since 1960. He has been known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and vulnerable characters....

, who had played the title character in The Graduate, including a spoken-word recording of excerpts from the soundtrack of Little Big Man

Little Big Man

Little Big Man is a 1970 American Western film directed by Arthur Penn and based on the 1964 comic novel by Thomas Berger. It is a picaresque comedy about a Caucasian boy raised by the Cheyenne nation during the 19th century...

.

Columbia Masterworks was also responsible for the original cast albums of Kiss Me, Kate

Kiss Me, Kate

Kiss Me, Kate is a musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. It is structured as a play within a play, where the interior play is a musical version of William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. The original production starred Alfred Drake, Patricia Morison, Lisa Kirk and Harold Lang.Kiss...

 (1948) and South Pacific

South Pacific (musical)

South Pacific is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan. The story draws from James A. Michener's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1947 book Tales of the South Pacific, weaving together characters and elements from several of its...

 (1949), as well as for the original stage

West Side Story (Original Broadway Cast)

West Side Story is the 1957 recording of a Broadway production of the musical West Side Story. Recorded 3 days after the show opened at the Winter Garden Theatre, the recording was released in October 1957 in both mono and stereo formats. In 1962, the album reached #5 on Billboard's "Pop Album"...

 and film

West Side Story (soundtrack)

West Side Story is the soundtrack to the 1961 film West Side Story. Released in 1961, the soundtrack spent 54 weeks at #1 on Billboard's album charts, giving it the longest run at #1 of any album in history, although some lists instead credit Michael Jackson's Thriller, on the grounds that West...

 albums of West Side Story (1957 and 1961, respectively), and the original cast recordings of Gypsy

Gypsy: A Musical Fable

Gypsy is a musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by Arthur Laurents. Gypsy is loosely based on the 1957 memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee, the famous striptease artist, and focuses on her mother, Rose, whose name has become synonymous with "the ultimate show business...

 (1959), The Sound of Music

The Sound of Music

The Sound of Music is a musical by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. It is based on the memoir of Maria von Trapp, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers...

 (again 1959), Flower Drum Song

Flower Drum Song

Flower Drum Song was the eighth stage musical by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. It was based on the 1957 novel, The Flower Drum Song, by Chinese-American author C. Y. Lee. The piece opened in 1958 on Broadway and was afterwards presented in the West End and on tour...

 (1958), and Camelot

Camelot (musical)

Camelot is a musical by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe . It is based on the King Arthur legend as adapted from the T. H. White tetralogy novel The Once and Future King....

 (1960). In 1946, Columbia Masterworks released the first album of Show Boat

Show Boat

Show Boat is a musical in two acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was originally produced in New York in 1927 and in London in 1928, and was based on the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber. The plot chronicles the lives of those living and working...

 featuring the cast of an actual production of the show, not just one or two singers from it as had been done before. This 1946 revival of Show Boat, which starred Jan Clayton

Jan Clayton

Jan Clayton was a film, musical theatre, and television actress.-Career:...

, Charles Fredericks

Charles Fredericks (actor)

Charles Fredericks was an American actor of stage, television, and film. He was particularly known for his highly prolific career in B-Western movies and television Westerns during the 1950s and 1960s...

, Carol Bruce

Carol Bruce

Carol Bruce was an American band singer, Broadway star, and film and television actress.Bruce was born Shirley Levy in Great Neck, New York, the daughter of Beatrice and Harry Levy. She began her career as a singer in the late 1930s with Larry Clinton and his band...

, Ralph Dumke, and Kenneth Spencer, was the longest-running revival of a show up to that time.

Another genre that Columbia Masterworks released some seminal albums in was electronic music. 1963 saw the release of Columbia Princeton Electronic Music Center, a compilation of avant-garde electronic compositions created at the famed studio by Bulent Arel

Bülent Arel

Bülent Arel was a Turkish-born composer of contemporary classical music and electronic music.He was born in Istanbul, and studied composition at the Ankara Conservatory and sound engineering in Paris...

, Milton Babbitt

Milton Babbitt

Milton Byron Babbitt was an American composer, music theorist, and teacher. He is particularly noted for his serial and electronic music.-Biography:...

, Vladimir Ussachevsky

Vladimir Ussachevsky

Vladimir Kirilovitch Ussachevsky was a composer, particularly known for his work in electronic music.-Biography:...

, and others. In 1968, Wendy Carlos

Wendy Carlos

Wendy Carlos is an American composer and electronic musician. Carlos first came to notice in the late 1960s with recordings made on the Moog synthesizer, then a relatively new and unknown instrument; most notable were LPs of synthesized Bach and the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick's film A...

's landmark electronic-music album Switched-On Bach

Switched-On Bach

-Details:The album consists of pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach, performed on a Moog synthesizer, a modular synthesizer system, one of which can be seen at the back of the room on the album cover. "Switched-On Bach," or "S-OB" as Carlos referred to it, was recorded on a custom-built 8 track recorder...

, containing transcriptions of a number of Bach's most famous compositions for the Moog synthesizer

Moog synthesizer

Moog synthesizer may refer to any number of analog synthesizers designed by Dr. Robert Moog or manufactured by Moog Music, and is commonly used as a generic term for older-generation analog music synthesizers. The Moog company pioneered the commercial manufacture of modular voltage-controlled...

, was issued on Columbia Masterworks, which continued to release Carlos's output until the mid-'80s. Morton Subotnick

Morton Subotnick

Morton Subotnick is an American composer of electronic music, best known for his Silver Apples of the Moon, the first electronic work commissioned by a record company, Nonesuch...

's Sidewinder

Sidewinder

Sidewinder may refer to:* Crotalus cerastes, a venomous pit-viper species found in the southwestern United StatesIn military and aviation* AIM-9 Sidewinder, a heat-seeking, short-range, air-to-air missile...

 followed in 1971. The label also released several other lesser classical-meets-synthesizer albums in the wake of Switched-On Bachsuccess.

Columbia Masterworks was renamed CBS Masterworks Records

CBS Masterworks Records

CBS Masterworks Records was a subsidiary of CBS Records, producing classical and spoken-word releases as well as Broadway albums.It was started in 1927 as Columbia Masterworks Records, a subsidiary of the Columbia Records label...

 in 1980 and separated from the Columbia label. In 1990 it was renamed Sony Classical Records

Sony Classical Records

Sony Classical Records was started in 1927 as Columbia Masterworks Records, a subsidiary of the American Columbia Records. In 1948, it issued the first commercially successful long-playing 12" record...

 because of the sale of CBS Records to the Sony Corporation.

The Masterworks name lives on in the label's Broadway album label, Columbia Broadway Masterworks, some of whose reissues are often packaged with the familiar bronze logo Columbia design on the CD (and the first version of the Columbia Walking Eye logo) as well as the name of the label's parent Sony BMG Masterworks

Sony BMG Masterworks

Sony Masterworks is a record label. It is the result of a restructuring of Sony Music Entertainment's classical music division. Before the acquisition of Bertelsmann's shares in the former Sony BMG, the label was known as Sony BMG Masterworks....

. In 2006, Sony BMG consolidated the Columbia Broadway Masterworks line with RCA Victor's Broadway series to form Masterworks Broadway Records.http://masterworksbroadway.com