Worst looking CD/LP artwork

[JBS]

[Irons]

It makes sense from a conductor's point of view, you're no longer relegated to making ~ 20-25 minute movements along with a whole host of other benefits.

Photos of Arrau at the opening of the Polydor pressing plant

Great pics. My first thought it appears from a long time ago. Of course 40 years is!

[Pohjolas Daughter]

I was sampling this set this week, *shudder*




Good performances, but do I need a third set of Hartmann SQs? I have Pellegrini and Zehetmair.

That looks like some sort of torture device that someone created!    Shudder...

Great pics. My first thought it appears from a long time ago. Of course 40 years is!

+1 And Lordie, how time flies! 

PD

[Madiel]

That's... confusing.

[Florestan]

WTF 

[Scion7]

As bad as this is ... and it's 'orrible ... I still prefer it to some of the pretentious posings on CD covers of the past three years by this young crop of musicians arriving on the scene.  Phew!

[JBS]

I can report, having now listened to the recording via the Warner Barbirolli box, that the performance is much better than the image suggests.

[staxomega]

Great pics. My first thought it appears from a long time ago. Of course 40 years is!

CD does not feel that old to me  Maybe because we came to it a bit late, my dad wasn't a hifi person and we got our first CD player in '89 or '90. I remember staring through the window of the CD player with the disc spinning so fast, and wondering how it could hold all that music. At least with cassettes you could pull the tape out, play with it, wrap your sibilings up like a mummy and see how it could hold all that music.

I can report, having now listened to the recording via the Warner Barbirolli box, that the performance is much better than the image suggests.

Yes indeed, that performance was new to me through the Barbirolli box, quite enjoyable. I think the art would have been fine had the bust looked like Mozart. I like that they went to the effort of contouring the text to forehead, down to parts of text being lifted up from things like the wrinkles in the paper.

[staxomega]

1978

Purely personal opinion; but I have owned this L.P. for four decades and still consider it having the most off putting cover in my record collection.  First because Scheherazade is reduced to serving girl status in the illustration-- not even her face is visible and the work is "Scheherazade", not "Sultan"; but second and more objectionable the Sultan's face is TOO detailed-- almost certainly modeled after a real person.  The illustrator and his subject might have gotten a chuckle out of it-- but I think it trivializes the work and recording.  Of course it also means I've wasted too much of my life obsessing over it.

What a coincidence, I made a long post on Scheherazade on another board this morning. I posted this artwork as one that I like (also love the performance):



Is that performance with Maazel good?

[Jo498]

I don't much care for Sheherazade but I love many of the 1950s DG covers when they had the simple yellow bar at the top instead of the more elaborate "cartouche". I kept a few  7" and 10" vinyl I got in Ebay hauls years ago only for these covers (although I have not yet managed to use them as decoration for an "audio room"...

But nice covers is another thread... FWIW I am not fond of the London/Maazel cover but don't find it that offensive either.

[Florestan]

The language on this is Portuguese. I wonder why.

[ritter]

The language on this is Portuguese. I wonder why.

In the days of LP, DG (and other labels) released many records in Spain with Spanish language covers and booklets (I remember getting —in the late 70s— the Böhm set of the complete Mozart symphonies in that guise). I believe the pressings were local as well. I suppose a similar thing happened in Portugal (perhaps even in Brazil?).



EDIT:

Discogs gives Brazil as the country of release of that particular LP of Fricsay's Sheherezade pictured above. (https://www.discogs.com/release/13341542-Nikolai-Rimsky-Korsakov-Ferenc-Fricsay-Radio-Symphonie-Orchester-Berlin-Scheherazade-Nach-Tausend-Un).

[Iota]

That's very weird indeed! It reminds me a bit of Jeff Bridges, if he'll pardon me for saying so ..

If it's meant to be Jupiter suffering the effects of runaway entropy, or perhaps the morning after one of Johnson's No.10 lockdown parties .. it seems entirely unfitting for the Mozart symphony. Though I imagine if Schnittke had written something with that name, it could have been an inspired choice.

[Jo498]

Jupiter after a thunderbolt was reflected back and hit him...

The picture on the Fricsay cover was the same in the German version; this is also findable on discogs, only very small.

[staxomega]

The language on this is Portuguese. I wonder why.

This was an image I pulled off the web, ritter seems to have spotted the source. I don't have the CD at this location to say what language it is in.

The picture on the Fricsay cover was the same in the German version; this is also findable on discogs, only very small.

That's why I used that image, it was the largest Google Images brought up for that art.

[Jo498]

The cover that was not easily available larger, was the Fricsay.
Interestingly the picture was re-used a bit later in the 1960s DG style. Note the decidedly German spelling "Scheherazade" and "Korssakoff" (the latter is actually uncommon or obsolete by now, I think, it would be "Korsakov" or "Korsakow" although there never was a really consistent spelling of Russian names in German).

[Madiel]

CD does not feel that old to me  Maybe because we came to it a bit late, my dad wasn't a hifi person and we got our first CD player in '89 or '90.

...so only about 32 years ago.

[JBS]

The cover that was not easily available larger, was the Fricsay.
Interestingly the picture was re-used a bit later in the 1960s DG style. Note the decidedly German spelling "Scheherazade" and "Korssakoff" (the latter is actually uncommon or obsolete by now, I think, it would be "Korsakov" or "Korsakow" although there never was a really consistent spelling of Russian names in German).

The transcription from Russian to German "-jew" for the syllable that in Anglophonic is transcribed "-yev' (as in Tanejew/Taneyev) used to stop me in my tracks (since I'm Jewish) although I'm more used to it now.

[Madiel]

If there's one thing that learning other languages really teaches you, it's that different people have very different ideas about what the same 26 symbols actually represent.

Putting aside all the ways in which English's internal ideas on that question are thoroughly scrambled...

[Florestan]

If there's one thing that learning other languages really teaches you, it's that different people have very different ideas about what the same 26 symbols actually represent.

I do wonder what sort of a Jew is a "tane Jew" (Tanejew). 

Does "tane" mean anything in English?

Afaik, "pula" is the Botswana currency, but go asking a Romanian what "pula" means...