Unicorn-Kanchana
Encyclopedia
| Unicorn-Kanchana | |||
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| Parent company | |||
| Founded | 1968 | ||
| Founder(s) | John Goldsmith | ||
| Distributing label | Harmonia Mundi Harmonia Mundi Harmonia Mundi is an independent music record label founded in 1958 by Bernard Coutaz in Arles . The Latin phrase means "world harmony".... |
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| Genre(s) | classical music film soundtracks |
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| Country | UK 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... |
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| Web address | UK Distributor | ||
Unicorn-Kanchana (1970-1990s) was a British independent record label
Independent record label
An independent record label is a record label operating without the funding of or outside the organizations of the major record labels. A great number of bands and musical acts begin on independent labels.-Overview:...
. Originally known as Unicorn Records, the name Kanchana was added later to distinguish the company from Unicorn Records of Montréal, Canada. In Hindu
Hindu
Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...
and Buddhist mythology, the female name Kanchana means an Apsara
Apsara
An Apsara , also known as Vidhya Dhari or Tep Apsar in Khmer, Accharā or A Bố Sa La Tư , Bidadari , Biradali , Widodari and Apson , is a female spirit of the clouds and waters in...
, a spirit of the clouds and waters.
The label specialised mainly in classical music and film soundtracks. Artists signed to the label included Andrzej Panufnik
Andrzej Panufnik
Sir Andrzej Panufnik was a Polish composer, pianist, conductor and pedagogue. He became established as one of the leading Polish composers, and as a conductor he was instrumental in the re-establishment of the Warsaw Philharmonic orchestra after World War II...
, Jascha Horenstein
Jascha Horenstein
Jascha Horenstein was an American conductor.Horenstein was born in Kiev, Russian Empire , into a well-to-do Jewish family; his mother came from an Austrian rabbinical family and his father was Russian....
, Jennifer Bate
Jennifer Bate
Jennifer Lucy Bate OBE is a British concert organist.Born in London, Bate is the daughter of H.A. Bate, organist of St James's Muswell Hill from 1924 to 1978. She is especially regarded as an authority on the organ music of Messiaen, having befriended him within the last twenty years of his life...
, Henry Herford
Henry Herford
Henry Herford is a Scottish baritone singer.He read Classics and English at Cambridge University, and studied singing at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester where he was awarded the Curtis Gold Medal. He is currently the RNCM's Tutor in French Song...
and Peter Maxwell Davies
Peter Maxwell Davies
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, CBE is an English composer and conductor and is currently Master of the Queen's Music.-Biography:...
. The label also released several recordings of lesser-known British composers, including Havergal Brian
Havergal Brian
Havergal Brian , was a British classical composer.Brian acquired a legendary status at the time of his rediscovery in the 1950s and 1960s for the many symphonies he had managed to write. By the end of his life he had completed 32, an unusually large number for any composer since Haydn or Mozart...
, George Dyson
George Dyson (composer)
Sir George Dyson KCVO was a well-known English musician and composer. His son is the physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson and among his grandchildren are the science historian George Dyson and Esther Dyson...
and Cipriani Potter
Cipriani Potter
Philip Cipriani Hambly Potter was a British composer, pianist and educator.-Life and career:Born in London, the son of a piano teacher named Richard Huddleston Potter, Cipriani was named after his godmother...
.
The Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra
Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra
The Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra is a youth orchestra based in Leicester, England. The players, aged between 15 and 18, are all drawn from secondary schools in the county of Leicestershire and the City of Leicester.-History:...
made the very first commercial recording of Havergal Brian’s music. Symphonies Nos. 10 and 21, conducted by James Loughran
James Loughran
James Loughran CBE, DMus., FRNCM, FRSAMD is a Scottish conductor.-Early life:Educated at St Aloysius' College in Glasgow, Loughran conducted at school and afterwards, while studying economics and law...
and Eric Pinkett
Eric Pinkett
Eric Pinkett O.B.E. , was the founder of the internationally famous Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra. He established the Leicestershire County School of Music in 1948 and continued to conduct the orchestra until his retirement in 1976.His memoirs were published in 1969 by way of a 21st...
respectively, were recorded at the De Monfort Hall, Leicester
Leicester
Leicester is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England, and the county town of Leicestershire. The city lies on the River Soar and at the edge of the National Forest...
in 1972. The producer was Robert Simpson
Robert Simpson (composer)
Robert Simpson was an English composer and long-serving BBC producer and broadcaster.He is best known for his orchestral and chamber music , and for his writings on the music of Beethoven, Bruckner, Nielsen and Sibelius. He studied composition under Herbert Howells...
and the LP was released by Unicorn Records to great critical acclaim in 1973. A special edition of the television programme Aquarius gave considerable coverage to the recording session (see video links below).
Bernard Herrmann
Bernard Herrmann
Bernard Herrmann was an American composer noted for his work in motion pictures.An Academy Award-winner , Herrmann is particularly known for his collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock, most famously Psycho, North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo...
was also a Unicorn artist and released several albums of his own film soundtracks as well as a symphony
Symphony
A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...
and his opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights (Herrmann)
Wuthering Heights is the sole opera written by Bernard Herrmann. He worked on it from 1943 to 1951. It is cast in a prologue, 4 acts, and an epilogue that repeats the music of the prologue...
, based on the novel of the same name
Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights is a novel by Emily Brontë published in 1847. It was her only novel and written between December 1845 and July 1846. It remained unpublished until July 1847 and was not printed until December after the success of her sister Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre...
.
Horenstein's Mahler recordings (Symphonies 1
Symphony No. 1 (Mahler)
The Symphony No. 1 in D major by Gustav Mahler was mainly composed between late 1887 and March 1888, though it incorporates music Mahler had composed for previous works. It was composed while Mahler was second conductor at the Leipzig Opera, Germany...
, 3
Symphony No. 3 (Mahler)
The Symphony No. 3 by Gustav Mahler was written between 1893 and 1896. It is his longest piece and is the longest symphony in the standard repertoire, with a typical performance lasting around ninety to one hundred minutes.- Structure :...
and 6
Symphony No. 6 (Mahler)
The Symphony No. 6 in A minor by Gustav Mahler, sometimes referred to as the Tragische , was composed between 1903 and 1904 . The work's first performance was in Essen, on May 27, 1906, conducted by the composer.The tragic, even nihilistic ending of No...
) were released by the label, as well as his readings of the music of Carl Nielsen
Carl Nielsen
Carl August Nielsen , , widely recognised as Denmark's greatest composer, was also a conductor and a violinist. Brought up by poor but musically talented parents on the island of Funen, he demonstrated his musical abilities at an early age...
, the recording of the last-named's 5th Symphony being the first recording of the new label.
In 1970, Unicorn recorded Andrzej Panufnik's Universal Prayer
Universal Prayer
The name Universal Prayer is given to at least two compositions:* as another name of the prayer O Parvardigar, composed by Meher Baba* The Universal Prayer, a poem by Alexander Pope...
in Westminster Cathedral. Composed for four vocal soloists, a choir, three harps and organ, it was conducted by Leopold Stokowski in the presence of the composer.
The television composer Laurie Johnson
Laurie Johnson
Laurie Johnson is an English film and television composer, and bandleader.-Career:...
recorded film scores on Unicorn-Kanchana, as well as an album of his own music from The Avengers
The Avengers (TV series)
The Avengers is a spy-fi British television series set in the 1960s Britain. The Avengers initially focused on Dr. David Keel and his assistant John Steed . Hendry left after the first series and Steed became the main character, partnered with a succession of assistants...
, The New Avengers and The Professionals
The Professionals (TV series)
The Professionals was a British crime-action television drama series produced by Avengers Mk1 Productions and London Weekend Television that aired on the ITV network from 1977 to 1983. In all, 57 episodes were produced, filmed between 1977 and 1981. It starred Martin Shaw, Lewis Collins and Gordon...
. Like Herrmann, he also released a symphony (for jazz orchestra, subtitled Synthesis) for the label.
Unicorn-Kanchana was one of the labels which released recordings using Ambisonic
Ambisonics
Ambisonics is a series of recording and replay techniques using multichannel mixing technology that can be used live or in the studio. By encoding and decoding sound information on a number of channels, a 2-dimensional or 3-dimensional sound field can be presented...
recording technology during the 1970s and 1980s. One of the most celebrated was Laurie Johnson's re-recording of Herrmann's North by Northwest
North by Northwest
North by Northwest is a 1959 American thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason, and featuring Leo G. Carroll and Martin Landau...
score.
The label ceased producing CDs in the 1990s. Since then, much of its classical output has been re-released on the budget Regis label, the film music being licensed to several other small labels. Several of the recordings (including the Herrmann opera) have not however reappeared. However in 2008 several long-unavailable Unicorn recordings started to re-emerge via music download
Music download
A music download is the transferral of music from an Internet-facing computer or website to a user's local computer. This term encompasses both legal downloads and downloads of copyright material without permission or payment...
sites.