Other Classical Artists

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Everything You Hear Is True: The Telarc Legacy (index)

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Many artists recorded with Telarc, and some of these relationships lasted for many years and many records. Pianist John O’Conor said that recording sessions were “like being with family. We were playing to friends.”1 Such long-term arrangements allow the artist to explore varied repertoire and accomplish career-boosting feats such as recording the complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas, For Telarc, it helped to build their catalog and their credentials as a classical label. Telarc and their artists expected a great deal out of each other, and that led to dynamic, productive working relationships and deep personal connections. Here are just a few of those artists.

Organist Michael Murray was the only artist whose association with Telarc reached back before the company was formed. Jack Renner recorded several projects with Murray during the Advent Recording Company days. In 1977, he recorded an album on the Great Organ in The Methuen Music Hall, one of only three direct to disc records that Telarc made before switching to the Soundstream digital recorder.2 For Murray’s recording of the Saint-Saens Symphony No. 3 (with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Eugene Ormandy) the Telarc team found the hall at the Academy of Music to be acoustically unsuitable and the organ “unremarkable.”3 They arranged to record at St. Francis de Sales Church, where the organ and room had “just what was needed for the work.” It required, though, that a number of the church’s heavy oaken pews be removed for the day.

Murray recorded a total of twenty-two albums for Telarc on instruments across the United States and in Europe. He also recorded with the Empire Brass, trumpeter Rolf Smedvig, and the orchestras of Atlanta, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. 

Murray has written extensively on his teacher, French organist Marcel Dupre, and cultural critic Jacques Barzun.

Irish pianist John O’Conor’s relationship with Telarc began after Cleveland radio host Albert Petrak told Telarc producer Bob Woods about a recital O’Conor had performed in Cleveland at the behest of the Irish Tourist Board. O’Conor was friends with classical producer James Mallinson, who also recommended him to Woods. He recorded his first album with Telarc in May 1985 and went on to release twenty-four in all, including the complete sonatas of Beethoven, several piano concertos of Mozart, Beethoven, and John Field, and Schubert chamber music with the Cleveland Quartet.

O’Conor is a champion of Irish composer John Field and recorded three discs of Field’s music on Telarc. The first of these was Field’s complete Nocturnes for solo piano,  (“John Field wrote his first Nocturnes when Chopin was only four!”).4  However, it took some convincing to get Telarc to make the first recording (“Jack Renner fought tooth and nail against it.”). He told the author the story in a 2022 interview taped in Aspen, Colorado.

The Cleveland Quartet was formed at the Cleveland Institute of Music in 1969 and recorded for Telarc from 1985 until they disbanded in 1995. The quartet recorded the complete Beethoven quartets, along with works of Schubert, Debussy, Dvorak, and others. Prior to joining the Cleveland Quartet in 1987, violist James Dunham was a founding member of the Sequoia String Quartet.  Sequoia was also involved in the early days of digital recording, releasing an album recorded on the Soundstream system in May of 1979, just a year after Telarc’s groundbreaking album. 

Harpist Yolanda Kondonassis has recorded eleven albums for Telarc. These projects revolve around various themes, including the music of American composers Alan Hohvaness and Bright Sheng, baroque music written or arranged for harp, and thematic albums such as Quietude and American Harp.  Her album with Jahja Ling and the San Diego Symphony, Never Far Away: The Music of Bright Sheng, made the Billboard Top Traditional Classical Albums chart for October 24, 2009.

Kondonassis is the head of the Harp Department at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Oberlin Conservatory, where she succeeded her teacher, legendary harp pedagogue Alice Chalifoux. She is the author The Composer’s Guide to Writing Well for the Modern Harp and has given numerous workshops for composers about how to write for this complex instrument. 

Beginning in 1988, the Empire Brass Quintet recorded fourteen albums for Telarc, ranging from the antiphonal music of Gabrieli to brass arrangements of ragtime and Broadway tunes. Several of their albums reached the Billboard Classical or Crossover charts. A favorite recording venue for the Quintet was a converted roller-skating rink in Lennox, Massachusetts. The acoustics in this space allowed the sound of the quintet to ring sonorously for at least three seconds, although the Telarc team typically had to haul in a truckload of acoustic panels to focus the quintet’s main sound towards the microphones. Situated far from major cities, it was economical to book for days at a time and was free from outside noise. Unless, that is, a plane went over. When that happened, it often necessitated a ten-minute break because the plane could be heard on the microphones from a long way off.

The Empire Brass Quintet’s association with Telarc lasted through several personnel changes. Quintet members Rolf Smedvig (trumpet) and Eric Ruske (horn) also recorded solo albums for Telarc. Tubist Sam Pilafian also recorded with his jazz crossover group, Travelin’ Light. In addition to his current position with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Trumpeter Jeff Curnow is a noted cartoonist specializing in classical music humor.5 

Last updated on April 16th, 2024 at 03:17 pm

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Telarc promotional button with the text "Everything You Hear is True"

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  1. John O’Conor, interview with the author, Aspen, August 8, 2022. ↩︎
  2. For an account of another of those discs, see this page about The Bass Drum Heard Round the World. ↩︎
  3. Michael Murray, email conversation with the author, April 2022 ↩︎
  4. John O’Conor, interview with the author, Aspen, August 8, 2022. ↩︎
  5. Yes, there is such a thing! Check out Curnow’s work here. ↩︎