UPDATE: An industry source close to the situation has alerted Classicalite that the EMI and Virgin names will disappear under Warner Bros., and all their recordings will be housed under the revived Erato label.
Well that was the worst-kept secret in the classical music world!
EMI Classical and its sister label Virgin Classics are to be spun out of the recent Universal Music takeover, and will be rolled in to Warner Music.
How important is this news? Huge.
EMI Classical has been one of the most vital recording forces on the classical scene for many decades, releasing hundreds of classic recordings from, well, you name it--Maria Callas’s iconic Tosca under Victor de Sabata to the Simon Rattle/CBSO Mahler’s Second Symphony. Rattle has stayed with the label that championed him even when his recordings didn’t sell, and he rewarded that loyalty by bringing them the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra when he ascended to its music directorship.
In recent times, EMI has boasted signings such as Martha Argerich, Leif Ove Andsnes, Antonio Pappano and Angela Gheorghiu.
Even if the uncertainty surrounding the label over the last few years has led to some of its brightest stars running for cover with rival outfits, the power of the EMI brand is still a force to be reckoned with.
In the meantime, Virgin Classics, snapped up as one of the more impressive indie labels and allowed to operate very much as an "indie within a major," has retained its superb list of artists, many of them loyal to its inspirational director Alain Lanceron (one of the industry’s great talent-spotters). It was Lanceron who first signed Rolando Villazón, until the Mexican tenor could no longer resist the lure of DG’s marketing might.
Yet, Virgin still has a roster second-to-none--including pianists Piotr Anderszewski and Nicholas Angelich, the Capuçon brothers (violin and cello, respectively), sopranos Natalie Dessay and Diana Damrau, mezzo Joyce DiDonato, counter-tenors Philippe Jaroussky, Max Emanuel Cencic and David Daniels and conductor Emmanuelle Haïm.
What happens now? Well, it’s an interesting dynamic.
Warner Classics has a similarly impressive catalog in terms of names, it is of course a big parent company, yet the imprint hasn’t been given huge amounts of funding of late to make very many new recordings--some excellent and honorable exceptions aside, but they simply have not been operating with anything like the new release volume of old.
And still, Warner Bros. has announced that they’ll revive their Erato label (does that mean the EMI name will disappear?). The exact management structure hasn't been announced, and it’s also not known what their release sheet will look like.
Neither, Classicalite suspects, will be an easy takeover. There’s likely to be a morass of licensing deals and contracts that will need picking through and tweaking for the new owners--and when you’re dealing with a catalogue as vast as EMI’s, that’s a lot of work.
On the plus side, EMI Classical is, we believe, profitable, which will give its new owners motivation to allow it keep producing new material.
But look, most important--it’s in the hands of a music company. That’s got to be better than a venture capitalist. Hasn’t it?
