For its parent company, see Sony Masterworks.

Sony Classical Records was 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....

 as Columbia Masterworks Records

Columbia Masterworks Records

Columbia Masterworks Records was a record label started in 1927 by Columbia Records.It was intended for releases of classical music 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...

, a subsidiary of the American 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...

. In 1948, it issued the first commercially successful long-playing 12" record. Over the next decades its artists included Isaac Stern

Isaac Stern

Isaac Stern was a Ukrainian-born violinist. He was renowned for his recordings and for discovering new musical talent.-Biography:Isaac Stern was born into a Jewish family in Kremenets, Ukraine. He was fourteen months old when his family moved to San Francisco...

, Pablo Casals

Pablo Casals

Pau Casals i Defilló , known during his professional career as Pablo Casals, was a Spanish Catalan cellist and conductor. He is generally regarded as the pre-eminent cellist of the first half of the 20th century, and one of the greatest cellists of all time...

, 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...

, 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...

, Vangelis

Vangelis

Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou is a Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock and orchestral music, under the artist name Vangelis...

, Elliot Goldenthal

Elliot Goldenthal

Elliot Goldenthal is an American composer of contemporary classical music. He was a student of Aaron Copland and John Corigliano, and is best known for his distinctive style and ability to blend various musical styles and techniques in original and inventive ways...

 and 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...

.

Columbia Records used the Masterworks brand name not only for classical and Broadway records, but also for spoken-word albums such as 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...

's successful I Can Hear It Now series. Parent CBS

CBS

CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

 also featured the Masterworks name on its consumer electronics equipment.

In 1980 the Columbia Masterworks label 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...

, but in 1990 after CBS Records was acquired by Sony

Sony

, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....

 it was finally renamed Sony Classical Records (Its logo echoes the "Magic Notes" logo that was Columbia's emblem until 1955). During the 1990s the label attracted controversy under the leadership of Peter Gelb

Peter Gelb

Peter Gelb is an American arts administrator. He is currently General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.-Early life:...

 as it emphasized crossover

Crossover (music)

Crossover is a term applied to musical works or performers appearing on two or more of the record charts which track differing musical tastes, or genres...

 music over mainstream classical releases, failing to make available much of its archive of great recordings.

Going "back to the future," the Masterworks name lives on in its series of Broadway cast albums, Masterworks Broadway Records, and as the name of Sony Music Entertainment's

Sony Music Entertainment

Sony Music Entertainment ' is the second-largest global recorded music company of the "big four" record companies and is controlled by Sony Corporation of America, the United States subsidiary of Japan's Sony Corporation....

 classical music division, Sony Masterworks.