OUTHERE DISTRIBUTION
A NEW DISTRIBUTOR IN BENELUX
12th January 2018
Since November 2017, Supraphon has started to co-operate with Outhere Distribution, a new distributor in Benelux.
Read what has recently appeared in the Dutch classical music magazine Klassieke Zaken about Supraphon:
The Safekeeper of Czech Music
Every music lover warms up to hearing the name Supraphon. The Czech label is not only the safekeeper for Czech music but also encompasses many beautiful and famous recordings.
The origins of the label are in fact based in Amsterdam where in the 1920s the label Ultraphon started making LP’s. The Czech company Ravitas acquired the distribution rights for the Czech Republic. When Ultraphon went bankrupt some time later Ravitas bought the name and had it registered in 1932 as Supraphon. This was in the first place meant for record players in the Czech Republic. But already in the 1930’s Suprahon started producing it’s own records with music from Czech composers like Smetana, Dvořák and Janáček, mainly recorded by Czech musicians and orchestras.
But only in 2012 Supraphon released it’s most talked about LP connected to the 1930s and ‘40s. On the 5th of February 1939 Václav Talich conducted Smetana’s entire Má Vlast with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. This concert in the National Theatre in Prague was broadcasted live on the radio and grew out to become a protest against the nazi’s and as a manifesto of patriotism. Talich was, just like Karel Ancerl and Václav Neumann, one of the great Czech conductors who rose to international standing grace to the international distribution of Supraphon records. In 2011 Supraphon released the rediscovered radio recordings of this historical concert.
Supraphon, distributed from the 1st of November by Outhere Distribution, still focusses primarily on Czech music and musicians with a catalogue which included everything from pleasing Christmas and folk songs to the big symphonies and other works by the Czech giants. One of the most remarkable recent releases is a CD with the 2nd piano quintet and the string quintet by Dvořák played by the Pavel Haas Quartet with Boris Giltburg and Pavel Nikl. This quartet already made the headlines before with their recording of Dvořák’s string quartets and these musicians apply their typical Bohemian sound to these two quintets.
Further releases of interest are Martinů’s Epic of Gilgamesh and string quartets from Petr Eben – one of more important Czech composers of the second half of the 20th century who passed away in 2007.
After 80 years Supraphon is still proudly keeping up the national heritage.