| Glossa in 2006 Spain’s most international label, widely considered the world’s finest in early music, has its headquarters in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, in the mountains near Madrid. Founded in 1992 by Carlos Céster and the brothers José Miguel and Emilio Moreno, it is a landmark not only on account of its extreme artistic coherence – with great names in early music among its exclusive performers, such as Paolo Pandolfo, La Venexiana, the Orchestra of the 18th Century, Le Concert Spirituel, Michael Noone, or the Moreno brothers themselves – but also because of its always innovative and exquisite formal proposals, such as the introduction of digipaks into classical music, the inclusion of multimedia tracks on some of its titles or, more recently, the presentation of the Glossa Platinum collection, with its avant-garde design. One of its most salient current projects is the integral recording of the madrigals of Claudio Monteverdi. Glossa’s world-wide distribution network is the best an independent label could hope for; it works with the leading distributor in the field in each country (Diverdi in Spain; Harmonia Mundi in France, UK, and the Netherlands; Note 1 in Germany; Tokyo M-Plus in Japan; Qualiton in the USA, etc.), thus ensuring the availability of the entire catalog in the world’s best stores. At present, Glossa is adjusting to a crisis in the record industry which it understands is irreversible. This crisis affects traditional distribution channels foremost and is caused on the one hand by piracy (which does not directly affect clasical music but causes serious damage to stores) and, on the other, by a clear devaluation of the CD as a collectible item. Faced with this situation, Glossa is espousing three parallel courses of action: a) Strengthening its image as an elite label through the careful production within its early music collections, and after a rigorous selection of projects, of a maximum of 15 new titles per year, assuring a higher-than-standard quality in the accompaying texts, design, and presentation. Glossa is also preparing a new collection, with an exclusive artistic design, to retrieve all its recordings that were out of stock due to market conditions. b) Working actively in the distribution via internet of material recordings as well as audio and graphics downloads. To that end, Glossa has reached an agreement with its Spanish distibutor, Diverdi, which offers one of the best web pages for classical music sales in Europe (www.diverdi.com), and is working on integrating its own web page (www.glossamusic.com) into the aforementioned store. Besides, Glossa is preparing all its recordings for digital distribution through the Apple iTunes Music Store in Europe, the US, and Canada. Furthermore, it has already signed an agreement with a Korean company for the online distribtion of its entire catalog in that country, a world leader in terms of high-speed internet access. c) Fostering joint projects with publishing houses, distributors, and large companies for the production of special editions allowing for the distribution of recordings in formats other than the traditional CD. In that vein, it has collaborated in the edition of disc-books with Spanish publishers such as Siruela and La Esfera de los Libros, has published an institutional disc-book whereof 15,000 copies were distributed to mark Spain’s presidency of the EU, and has played a relevant role in the design and preparation of the Clásica El País collection, a series of 50 disc-books distributed with the newspaper in 2004, with a total distribution in excess of 7 million copies. Besides, it is preparing a series of luxury bilingual editions, to be distributed as corporate gifts, as well as in bookstores in Spain, Latin America, UK, and the US. The label’s prestige has led renowned ensembles – such as the Dutch Orchestra of the 18th Century, conducted by Frans Brüggen, or the Flemish Radio Symphony Orchestra, with conductors such as Yoel Levi, Gerd Albrecht, Hervé Niquet, and Howard Shore –, to entrust the edition and distribution of their productions to Glossa. In addition, in 2005 the Fundación Caja Madrid has resumed its exquisite discographic collection Los Siglos de Oro, relying on Glossa’s artistic and commercial coordination for that purpose. Glossa’s publishing activity has been constantly valued by the world’s specialized press from the beginning. Among its leading awards are the Cecilia Award in Belgium, the UK’s Gramophone Award, the Edison Award in the Netherlands, the Cannes Classical Award in France and, more recently, the Premio de la Música in Spain, granted in April 2005 to the recording of the opera Don Quijote on two counts: best classical composer (Cristóbal Halffter) and best conductor (Pedro Halffter Caro). In a time when profound changes loom in the horizon for the record industry, Glossa thus feels well prepared to face the new challenges with confidence, and without betraying the three basic pillars of its activity: coherence, quality, and beauty. We quote here the enthusiastic words of the manager of the Orchestra of the 18th Century, which has led the peformance on original instruments of the great baroque and classical repertoire for almost a quarter of a century: “Glossa is the label of the future”. |
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