Angel at Two

Such diverse musical attractions as the Scots Guards Regimental Band, Violinist David Oistrakh and the Obernkirchen Children's Choir have one thing in common during their U.S. tours: in the program booklets or in ads appears a small, well-fed cherub who seems to be doodling with a long quill. This is the trademark of Angel Records, only two years old and one of the brightest, most enterprising record companies in the U.S. today.

Its roster of artists is impressive. In many cases the Angel touch has helped to make stars out of performers once little more than names in the U.S., notably Soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Conductor Herbert von Karajan with London's Philharmonia Orchestra, Russian Pianist Emil Gilels. Some record shoppers will buy the bright, cellophane-wrapped Angel albums for the label alone. Although Angel's sales are still well behind Victor and Columbia, the company now ranks fourth in classical LP sales (just behind London), and rival record executives have come to regard the muscle-flexing cherub nervously.

Married to a Giant. Like morning TV shows, Angel is run by a canny husband-and-wife team, but there is nothing sleepy-eyed about Dario and Doric Soria. Rome-born Dario Soria got into the record business more or less as a hobby while he was working as a radio director at CBS, and started to bring Italy's lively Cetra opera recordings to the U.S. as a sideline. The sideline grew into a busy firm (Cetra-Soria), which five years later Soria sold to Capitol in a deal that reportedly involved $1 million. In 1953 Britain's giant Electric & Musical Industries Ltd., whose position in Europe is comparable to RCA's in the U.S., was looking around for a new U.S. outlet after getting divorced from Columbia. EMI eventually hitched up with Dario Soria, who became boss of its newly formed U.S. subsidiary. His wife Dorle gave up her long-standing job as press director for the Philharmonic-Symphony to take charge of Angel's artists, repertory and publicity.

From the beginning, the Angel line was enticingly baited. Examples:

¶ Its unusually attractive cover art (printed in Europe) includes reproductions of works by famed artists, e.g., Michelangelo's David emblazons the Israel Philharmonic albums, Picasso's Nature morte a la tete antique is on Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, an old print of French General Rochambeau with Washington at Yorktown goes with the second volume by the Garde Republicaine Band.

¶ Its disks, shipped in from England, are well-engineered, have quiet grooves and vital sound.

¶ Program notes are written by recognized authorities, e.g., Verdi Biographer Francis Toye.

¶ Its jackets are built with a doweled spine wide enough to carry lettering. In addition, records are "factory-sealed" for protection against being played by record-shop disk jockeys. They sell for $4.98, and sell as well or better than the same records in unadorned envelopes for $3.48.

¶ Its promotion is designed for the music lover with his nose in the air, e.g., "It's more than a gift, it's a compliment."

In its programing, Angel sometimes rushes in where even the foolhardy fear to tread, e.g., it has released such a risque modern work as Poulenc's Les Mamelles de Teresias. But there is also a large quota of safe and popular items--currently a new Madama Butterfly (the seventh on LP) ^and Oistrakh playing Lalo's Symphonic Espagnole. On the chic side, there are exquisite performances of the most sensuous musings of Debussy (Trois Nocturnes, La Mer) and Ravel (Daphnis et Chloe, L'Heure Espagnole}. There are also imposing works of Stravinsky and Bartok.

Even the middlebrow part of the catalogue is pretty dressy when a soprano of the stature of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf stars in Johann Strauss' Fledermaus.

Lapping It Up. Dorle's years in the concert business have sharpened the Sorias' musical taste, and Dario's residence in radio row has sharpened their box-office sense. Most records originate with EMI, but "I get ideas," says Dorle.

She read Gerald Moore's book The Unashamed Accompanist, about his ups and downs at the keyboard, and thought it would make the basis of a good record. It did. "We have some friends who love cats," she adds. "I like cats all right, and a cat record occurred to me." Practical Cats, with Robert Donat reading T. S. Eliot poems to music by Alan Rawsthorne, turned up in due course.

The reading is humorless and the music is indifferent, but cat lovers are lapping it all up.

Says Dorle: "I treat my records like artists. They are alive, like artists going into your home. I can't treat records like pancakes."

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