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Nov 29, 2024 | 
gramophone.co.uk | James Jolly
It was as a BBC Radio 3 ‘Composer of the Week’ sometime in my late teens that I first encountered the music of Franz Berwald.
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Jan 22, 2024 | 
gramophone.co.uk | James Jolly
James Jolly
The Gramophone story now takes on a more personal perspective as, at the start of 1990, I took over as Editor from Christopher Pollard (I’d joined the magazine from university five years earlier, and then spent a short spell away at BBC Radio 3 as a producer).
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Jan 18, 2024 | 
gramophone.co.uk | James Jolly
The 1980s both opened and closed with major consolidations within the classical record sector. PolyGram, which from the early 1960s had under its umbrella both Deutsche Grammophon and Philips, purchased Decca in 1980, though for the next couple of decades or so, the three labels would continue to operate independently: DG from Hamburg, Philips from Baarn in The Netherlands and Decca from London.
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Jan 17, 2024 | 
gramophone.co.uk | James Jolly
James Jolly
If the 1930s were a tough decade for the business, the 1970s presented their own challenges too, especially with the company having been robbed so recently of Cecil Pollard’s steady hand on the tiller.
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Jan 16, 2024 | 
gramophone.co.uk | James Jolly
As the new decade dawned, The Gramophone’s reviewing panel stood at 19 (ten years earlier it was four), and additional staff were needed by the expanding company. Barry Irving, who joined in 1965 as Assistant Advertising Manager, would stay with the company until 1999, and Malcolm Walker (who died in January 2023) joined as Assistant Editor the same year; he would be appointed Editor in 1972, a post he retained until 1980.
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Jan 11, 2024 | 
gramophone.co.uk | James Jolly
James Jolly
As Anthony Pollard has written in his history of the magazine’s first 75 years, ‘From the earliest days of the record industry, playing-time had always been a consideration’. The earliest seven-inch discs, created by Emil Berliner in 1895, played for about two minutes; with the arrival of the 12-inch 78rpm disc in 1903, this was doubled to about four and half minutes, a state of affairs that remained in place for the next 60 years.
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Jan 11, 2024 | 
gramophone.co.uk | James Jolly
The only group photo of the founders, Christopher Stone, Compton and Faith Mackenzie, with Cecil Pollard (standing) at the Silver Jubilee party in June 1948The most striking fact that emerges from the history of The Gramophone during the war years, is how central a part of so many people’s lives the magazine had become.
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Jan 5, 2024 | 
gramophone.co.uk | James Jolly
James Jolly
Compton Mackenzie at the offices of The Gramophone in Soho Square, London, in 1936It all started with a misunderstanding. In 1922 Compton Mackenzie, then aged 39, and already a novelist admired by the likes of Henry James and Scott Fitzgerald, had taken the crown lease on two Channel Islands, Herm and Jethou. A prolific writer – a facility he’d retain all his life – Mackenzie preferred to work late into the night, usually with music playing in the background.
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Nov 21, 2023 | 
gramophone.co.uk | James Jolly
September 30, 1987, was the date when history was made for two companies. For Gramophone it was the first time in the life of the Gramophone Awards (admittedly only 10 years old at the time) when a recording of Early Music was voted our Recording of the Year. Dame Elizabeth Legge-Schwarzkopf presented the Awards that year, and amid some pretty stellar company, a young Peter Phillips collected the Award. It was a major milestone in the life of Gimell, The Tallis Scholars’ record label.
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Oct 26, 2023 | 
gramophone.co.uk | James Jolly
James Jolly
I have a couple of special – but very different – memories of wonderful music-making in California. Thirty-one years ago, I flew to San Francisco to interview Herbert Blomstedt and on my first evening in the city went to the Opera to see Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
