Volume 50, Number 17 · November 6, 2003
Culture on the Market
By Charles Rosen
Some thirty years ago, the then head of CBS Records, Clive Davis, sent out a directive that no recording was to be undertaken if the recovery of its costs could not be projected within one year's sale in the United States. Accordingly the plan to record Mozart's Serenade for thirteen wind instruments with George Szell and members of the Cleveland Orchestra was canceled. One of the producers at CBS was properly indignant. 'Doesn't he know that we're an international company?' he said to me. 'The sale of classical music in Japan is twice that of the United States, the sale in Europe three times as great. We could have recovered the costs of this record in a short time with no difficulty.'
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