The Alpha Omega Sound

PRESS RELEASE: THE ALPHA OMEGA SOUND-THE RECORDING LABEL OF THE CHOPIN SOCIETY OF HONG KONG LTD

Adding one more record label to the plethora which already exists in a crowded field needs some explanation! Ours is very simple:

• We start with an exclusive and exciting set of recordings, some truly unique, which are ready to be released on a steady stream over the next two years. Ours will not be a 'one-off' label!
  
  
• We already have a number of artists which have recorded for our label choosing programmes which they, the artists, wished to present. We are determined that purely commercial considerations will not limit the repertoires and recordings which we will be presenting, thus ensuring that our audiences will be able to hear unusual, rarely recorded and exciting combinations of composers and of music.
  
  
• For all our original recordings we chose top ranking recording studios and engineers and all the final mastering has and will continue to be done at the Abbey Road Studios in London, where we have established a close and long-standing relationship. To ensure best quality right across the spectrum of our productions, our CDs will be pressed by Sony DADC in their facilities in Austria. We also plan to release carefully selected titles from our catalogue on vinyl LPs also specially mastered in the Abbey Road Studios.

The Alpha Omega Sound has two broad categories of recordings

• The unique archival recordings of SODRE.
  
  
• Purpose-recorded porgrammes either from live performances or studio recordings.

The SODRE archival recordings

The Chopin Society of Hong Kong Ltd is very proud and privileged to present to the music lovers of the world the music treasures which have laid undiscovered for over half a century in the sound archives of the SODRE in Montevideo, Uruguay.

The acronym SODRE stands in Spanish for Servicio Oficial de Difusión Radiotelevisión y Espectáculos, or the Official Service of Radio and Television Broadcasting and of Spectacles. This body was set up in December 1929 with the aim of using the then new medium of mass communications, the radio, as a tool for fostering culture and arts in Uruguay. The activities of the SODRE extended and diversified rapidly with the acquisition of a theater as its home base and the establishment during 1931-35 of its own orchestra, choir and corps de ballet. There followed decades of truly spectacular growth, with SODRE organizing concerts and recitals in Montevideo involving some of the most famous artists in the world at the time. These activities were regularly recorded and broadcast to the nation.

The growth of SODRE came to an abrupt end in September 1971 when a fire destroyed its theater and a substantial part of its archives and equipment .There followed difficult years, not made any easier by repeated economic and political crises which focused the attention of the country, and of its meager resources, to other more pressing issues. However, now, SODRE can look forward to its new home with purpose-built auditoria which will allow it to re-establish its position as one of the oldest and most sophisticated cultural institutions in South America.

As indicated, during the four decades of 1930s to 1960s, SODRE organized hundreds of musical events which were recorded live, in the pre-war period on 78 rpm special disks and in the postwar period on reel-to-reel tapes. The part of these invaluable archives which survived the fire was bundled away by the fire services and eventually deposited in large basement storage rooms at the present offices of the SODRE. Valiant efforts were made to re-archive and catalogue again these thousands of boxes of tapes and of disks, but a great number remained out of sequence and in effect “lost” as there was no easy way of locating them. Parts of the recordings of recitals were not kept together and some are still missing awaiting rediscovery!
In 2001 the Chopin Society of Hong Kong approached the board of directors of SODRE and sought permission for an initial exploration of the archives to establish what was accessible and assess the possibility of transferring these recordings to a digital medium so as to preserve them.

With the permission of SODRE, a selection of ten recitals, 15 reels, was edited and remastered at the Abbey Road Studios in London and 13 CDs of the 10 individual recitals plus a sampler were produced. These covered the live recordings of recitals of violin and piano by Heifetz, Oistrakh, Kogan, and Elman, a guitar recital by Segovia , piano recitals by Gieseking, Arrau, Gulda and Kraus and a voice recital by Anderson. A large number of these performances are completely new additions to the discography of these artists thus making this collection a “must have” for all music lovers.

We are privileged and proud that the board of directors of SODRE entrusted and licensed us with the production and issuing for worldwide distribution, except for Uruguay, these valuable recordings.
We are also privileged to have Maestro Vladimir Ashkenazy to introduce the series.
Of the ten recitals the following have been released with the other seven to be released at spaced intervals:

• The Sampler of the series
• Jascha Heifetz ( violin), Brooks Smith ( piano)
• David Oistrakh (violin) , Vladimir Yampolsky (piano)

Purpose recorded programs of already released CDs

• Alvaro Pierri (guitar). Guitar Sonatas, Vol. 1, works by Paganini, Ponce,Torroba and Ginastera.
  With the present CD, Alvaro Pierri, one of the best guitarists in the world, is embarking on a long term project with The Alpha Omega Sound, to record a comprehensive series of sonatas specifically composed for guitar and spanning the 19th to the 21st centuries.
  This CD was recorded as well as mastered at the Abbey Road Studios.
  
  
• Ilya Rashkovskiy (piano). Fantasias for Piano, works by Mozart, Chopin, Liszt and Scriabin. Ilya won the first prize in the first Hong Kong International Piano Competition organized by the Society in 2005. This is a studio recording made in Hong Kong and remastered at the Abbey Road Studios.
  
  
• Rachel Cheung (piano). Compositions by Mozart, Chopin, Schubert, Liszt and Poulenc. Rachel is an exceptionally talented young pianist from Hong Kong, a first prize-winner of several competitions and a frequently sponsored artist by the Chopin Society of Hong Kong Ltd.. This is a studio recording made in Hong Kong and remastered at the Abbey Road Studios.

CDs already recorded but not yet released

• Li Mingqiang (piano). Works by Chopin and Enescu and a selection of piano composition by contemporary Chinese composers.
  This is a double CD containing rare and mostly unobtainable recordings by one of the doyens of piano playing and teaching in China. What makes this CD all the more poignant, is that Prof Minqiang‟s performing career was ended in the 1960s by an injury to his hand sustained during the period of the Cultural Revolution when he was forced to work in a farm.
  The CD contains recordings made in Shanghai and in Romania all remastered at the Abbey Road Studios.
  
  
• Eduardo Fernandez (guitar). and Carlos Carzoglio (voice), F.Schubert “Die Schöne Müllerin”This is a rare recording of Schubert‟s masterwork transcribed for the guitar specifically for this recording by one of the leading guitarists in the world, Eduardo Fernandez, accompanying fellow Uruguayan Tenor, Carlos Carzoglio. This is a studio recording made in Hong Kong and remastered at the Abbey Road Studios.
  
  
• Jingsang Lee (piano). Works by Chopin, Mendelssohn and Hiller
  Jingsang Lee is the first prize winner of the Second Hong Kong International Piano Competition in 2008, a triennial event organized by the Chopin Society of Hong Kong.
  Hiller, a friend and contemporary of both Chopin and Mendelssohn is hardly recorded, and the selection of solo piano pieces in the CD is very likely the first ever. What makes this double CD even more attractive is that it contains a studio recording of the porgramme in a modern Steinway grand piano as well as a live recital recording of all the pieces performed on three period Steinway pianos dating broadly from the years when the composers were active.