Budget recordings of Alfred Scholz

There is a subset of "classical" releases which are credited to performers who have never been seen or heard in a live performance. Many of these performers are pseudonyms. Why would a release be published under a pseudonym? It could be because the performer has a restrictive contract with a different record label. It could be because the performance has been "borrowed" from its owner. Or perhaps the pseudonym is considered more marketable: for example the “well-known” pianist M. Bergerich. In the case of an ensemble, it could be a "scratch" ensemble brought togther just for the recording, and which does not otherwise have a name.

The most prolific producer of such budget recordings was Alfred Scholz. Scholz sometimes used his own name, sometimes made-up names, and sometimes the names of real people were given credit for performances which were not theirs.

It is not correct to assume any correspondence between the real and fictitious performers - names were mixed and matched liberally. Scholz sold the same recordings to different labels as different artists, and there are many examples in MBz of the same performance being credited in two or more distinct ways.

The recordings are usually found on labels including Point and PILZ (as Vienna Masters).

For example, Fake conductors and the Symphonie Fantastique describes how someone collected 170 differently credited recordings of the work, but on studying them found he only had 162 distinct performances.

Note that these budget recordings are not necessarily less "good" performances. Many are old performances which were sold for a one-off payment, rather than for royalties, and have been reissued in various guises ever since. According to this German reviewer most of the budget performances of Vivaldi's Four Seasons are actually a 1965 recording by Suzanne Lautenbacher, Württembergisches Kammerorchester and Jörg Faerber, but attributed to various pseudonymic artists. This interview with Hans-Jürgen Walther is quite revealing as to the way recordings were acquired, and the use of pseudonyms.

Relevant Musicbrainz entities

Budget recordings of Alfred Scholz/Lists has lists of MBz artists known to be used by Scholz.

Question

What is the best way to record these performances in the database? In particular, where a single performance, with identical acoustic fingerprint, is credited to two or more sets of performers, how should they be credited?

See the Talk page.

See also

• Pseudonyms: Alfred Scholz and the South German Philharmonic, John F. Berky, March 12, 2003 (revised January, 2009 and July, 2014)
• Wikipedia article for Alberto Lizzio and before cleanup
• Naxos bio of Hans Swarovsky
• rec.music.classical.recordings for some relevant discussions
  • Henry Adolph, Anton Nanut, Eugen Duvier, Alfred Scholz - Who the hell are they?
  • Anybody Know Anything About Alfred Scholz or Henry Adolph?
• Anton Bruckner - Discographic Horrors
• Hunting down the undead ghost of classical conductor George Richter