I remember a meet and greet in an LA restaurant with "King" Joe Szurly
around '94 or '95 where he rolled out Masterworks Heritage to the classical
buyers,
of which I was one from Tower Records. Joe said, "We are doing the most
beautiful thing I have ever seen; never, ever seen anything like it ever.
But I gotta tell
ya, I don't know how long we are gonna do this. You can submit your
requests for what you'd like to see, though don't bother with the Ruggles
because we're
never gonna do that. But I can't guarantee they're comin'; we'll see how
long this holds out -- hopefully we'll be lucky and it'll do well, I really
hope it does."

He brought along with him a mockup of the Bidu Sayao disc, and you know,
that DID do really well. And the digipak and art I agreed was splendid,
just like
Dennis says. But ultimately MHK fizzled out, and well before they got out
most things that one might desire, and I might argue that it was a little
too much too quickly. The problem with issuing things for 13.99 that are
available for 7.99 in the Great Performances and/or Essential Classics
lines is that people will always pay for the
cheaper version; even though you could sale price the MHK for 8.99, just
one dollar more for the fabulous packaging and annotation. But if you try
and delete those cheaper titles then the WalMarts that buy them for the
dumpbins will get mad because you are breaking up something they buy in
bulk already.

Uncle Dave Lewis
Lebanon, OH

On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 10:39 AM, Dennis Rooney <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> I will add to this thread only slightly. Sony Classical's Masterworks
> Heritage line was produced using transfer and mastering criteria developed
> by the label since 1991 on various other reissue lines, viz. Gould, Walter,
> Bernstein Stern, et al. MH may indeed have waved "a banner of quality", but
> its genesis was borne not only of a desire to celebrate a century of
> Columbia recordings but also to ring a different change on the DG Originals
> line. However, each MH package (like Mercury Living Presence) was
> individually designed, utilizing as much original art and photographic
> support as could be fit into such a small area. Using original souce was a
> prerequisite to production, but no attempt to employ any coeval playback
> gear was ever considered.
>
> DDR
>
>
>