We were lucky enough to buy a huge collection of vinyl from a well-known collector who lived in Kew Gardens in the New York Borough of Queens and collected a bit of every thing. My task is to describe what, in my 39 years of experience, is the most eclectic collection of classical music I have ever seen.

Normally, when one sees a large collection of classical, you see Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, and so forth, performed by world renowned artists. But Ed (withholding his last name) collected mainly 20th-century composers from every European country and a lot of American music that has been unjustly forgotten.

I think I know my composers, but there were a number of them in this collection that I have never heard of and whose existence is scantly documented in reference books that are in the English language.

One of the few sanguine effects of Eastern European communism was that each country had it’s own state-run record label that methodically recorded the music of every prominent living composer.

Here are a few examples:

 

COUNTRY	LABEL
Soviet Union	Melodiya
Romania	Electrocord
Bulgaria	Balkaton
Hungary	Hungaroton
Czechoslovakia	Supraphon
East Germany	Nova

In previous decades many department stores and record chains developed a pricing code system. They'd have a few different letters, each signifying a different pricing tier. There would be a little chart around the store giving you the price break down. I never really understood how this made things simpler or more efficient, maybe someone out there knows?