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 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 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.

The following lists are of artists known to be used by Scholz:

Real artists, names used (possibly) fraudulently

• Hans Swarovsky. Scholz's conducting professor, a real person with some genuine performances of his own on record, his name was also used by Scholz on recordings which he did not conduct.
• Hans Zanotelli. Another real person whose name was used.
• Hanspeter Gmür
• Nürnberger Symphoniker
• London Festival Orchestra. Decca studio orchestra from the 1950s, often credited alongside Henry Adolph and Alberto Lizzio (see below). As their history prior to the Ross Pople era (1980s) is a little fuzzy, this may be at least semi-legitimate.
• Münchener Kammerorchester
• Philharmonia Orchestra

Conductors

• Henry Adolph.
• Cesare Cantieri.
• Eugen Duvier. Probably - needs further investigation.
• Alberto Lizzio. Wikipedia states that Scholz wrote a fictitious biography stating that this was his father.
• Carlo Pantelli. Again, no online photos or bios, recordings mostly with fictitious orchestra Philharmonia Slavonica
• Serge Tchaikov.
• Denis Zsoltay.
• Hymisher Greenburg
• Simon Addison
• Francesco Macci
• Alexander von Pitamic
• Takao Matsumo

Ensembles

• Süddeutsche Philharmonie (South German Philharmonic). This "was a short-lived pick-up ensemble assembled by Scholz from members of the Czech Philharmonic in Prague and the Bamberg Symphony around 1968".
• Norddeutsche Philharmonie. You can probably see the pattern here.
• Philharmonia Slavonica. According to one unsourced WP article, the "performances attributed to them are often by the Austrian Radio (ORF) Orchestra."
• Camerata Romana
• The European Philharmonic Orchestra
• The English Philharmonic Orchestra
• Musici di San Marco
• Tokyo Festival Orchestra
• Mozart Festival Orchestra

Soloists

• M. Bergerich (piano)
• Dieter Goldmann (piano) - I can't find any biographical information about him, and he is a frequent performer on Scholz's recordings.

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.

References

• 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