The Winner Records was a United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 based record label

Record label

In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...

 from 1912 onwards. Its records were manufactured by the Edison Bell Record Works, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. This company, founded by James Hough, had originated in the early 1890s as an importer of Edison and Columbia

Columbia Graphophone Company

The Columbia Graphophone Company was one of the earliest gramophone companies in the United Kingdom. Under EMI, as Columbia Records, it became a very successful label in the 1950s and 1960s...

 cylinder phonographs; from 1898 Hough had also made cylinder records, initially using a separate company, Edisonia. When Edison set up his own European operation in 1904 the import franchise was withdrawn, but the name Edison-Bell remained in use. From 1909 the official name of Edison-Bell was J. E. Hough Ltd.

Winner records, with black or red labels, were mostly of a popular type, although they included some items of musical distinction such as early recordings by John Barbirolli

John Barbirolli

Sir John Barbirolli, CH was an English conductor and cellist. Born in London, of Italian and French parentage, he grew up in a family of professional musicians. His father and grandfather were violinists...

, then a child-prodigy performer on the violoncello, and nearly all of the discography of Marie Novello

Marie Novello

Marie Novello was a Welsh pianist. She was one of Theodor Leschetizky's last students and performed in public from childhood. Her early death from throat cancer cut short a promising career just as she began to record for one of the major English labels, having already amassed a considerable...

, one of the last students of Theodor Leschetizky

Teodor Leszetycki

Theodor Leschetizky was a Polish pianist, professor and composer.-Life:Theodor Leschetizky was born on the estate of the family of Count Potocki in Łańcut. His father was a gifted pianist and music teacher of Viennese birth. His mother Therèse Ulmann was a gifted singer of German origin...

. In the early 1920s the company introduced a higher-quality series, Velvet Face Records (so called because the material of which they were made was allegedly smoother than that used by other manufacturers). These had green labels, and the catalogue included some ambitious items, such as an abridged version (1925) of Edward Elgar

Edward Elgar

Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM, GCVO was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos...

's oratorio The Dream of Gerontius and, from Novello, what has been reported as the first recording of Bach's

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...

 Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565

Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565

The Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, is a piece of organ music attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach. It is one of the most famous works in the organ repertoire, and has been used in a variety of popular media ranging from film, video games, to rock music, and ringtones...

 (arranged for piano by Carl Tausig

Carl Tausig

Carl Tausig was a Polish virtuoso pianist, arranger and composer.-Life:Tausig was born in Warsaw to Jewish parents and received his first piano lessons from his father, pianist and composer Aloys Tausig, a student of Sigismond Thalberg. His father introduced him to Franz Liszt in Weimar at the...

) and a complete recording of Mendelssohn's

Felix Mendelssohn

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...

 First Piano Concerto

Piano Concerto No. 1 (Mendelssohn)

Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor was written in 1830–1, around the same time as his fourth symphony , and premiered in Munich in October 1831. He had already written a piano concerto in A minor with string accompaniment and two concertos with two pianos...

, her sole recording of a work extending over more than two record sides.

Edison-Bell was eventually absorbed by the English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 Decca

Decca Records

Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II, the link with the British company was broken for several decades....

company.