I came across this release, and was about to just clean up the titles (capitalization guidelines, mostly). But then I saw the Recording Artists. What a mess! The track 1 recording is credited to 6 orchestras and 5 conductors, many of which (conductors and orchestras) are apparently pseudonyms for Alfred Scholz (and what the hell was that guy thinking?). The rest of the recordings have varying numbers of orchestras and/or conductors credited. The Release Artist is consistent with the rest of the releases in the RG, but the cover art is from a different release with different orchestra/conductor (that part is easy enough to fix). Piled on to all this is, Discogs has mixed releases in the same Master release as well. Sheesh!
My first thought was to just make the recording artists match the release artists (following CSG, of course) and dump all the others, but is that going to leave a bunch of releases with missing recordings (The recordings are linked to a bunch of different releases)? I don’t want to create a bigger mess than I’m trying to fix.
Look at the Recording, not the Release. Technically it is true. Each of those orchestras are credited as playing on one release or other… even though they are all aliases of the one entity. I can understand the confusion when one does not understand what Scholtz did and how labels just resell and rebadge the same old toot.
One of the reasons I stay far away from classical. It is funny how MB has turned me on to so much more new music, but made me never want to buy classical due to the fear it causes attempting to document it in MB
Not all of them are Scholz’ pseudonyms. The Slovak Philharmonic and Libor Pesec are not, for example.
And I find it hard to believe that 2, or 3, orchestras are playing together on the same recording, under 2 or 3 conductors. Sure, maybe they’ve all recorded them individually, but this is one recording.
The issue will be caused by people attempting to merge the recordings on multiple releases, and then finding releases with bad credits on them. Not every editor understand classical music
Based on a quick look at just one of the Recordings, recording/71d1, it seems plausible that the relationship of many Releases sharing one Recording is plausibly true. The Recording seems to be a generic musical product, and the Releases all seem to be compilations made up of generic musical product. The track times are similar. The names claimed by the Releases all seem to be pseudonyms for Alfred Scholz and colleagues.
You can change a Recording Artist without worrying about breaking the connection from any of the many Releases to the shared Recording. You do this by editing the Recording entity itself. The Recording Artist value is a field within the Recording entity, while the connection from a Release to a Recording is to the Recording entity overall (via the Recording’s MBID).
The challenge this seems to pose for the CSG is that the CSG assumes that the Release packaging does not outright lie about the performers. Alfred Scholz’s antics perhaps strain that assumption to the breaking point. I haven’t taken the time to re-read the CSG for this reply. If it has guidelines for this situation, great. If not, it seems sensible to me that the Recording artist refer to just the true name of the artists involved, even if some Releases which include that Recording claim different names for the artists on their packaging.
The only “fix” I can see is to pick which orchestra it needs crediting to. Who is the “Important” one? Or the “original” one? Then leave the rest in the annotation.
Fake releases are an utter pain to make sense of. I once tried to sort out some dodgy Dutch synth that also did similar and kept reselling the same old recordings under multiple names. In the end I tried to focus on the earliest recordings where possible.
And then gave up and ran away screaming to hide in the corner of the room. Mess like this cannot be fixed in a nice way. All solutions will always be a mess when fake recordings are being put out in fake names. And then resold again and again.
One trick on something like this is taking note of the labels. And I expect they are cheap reissue labels.
Yes, the feedback from both of you helps. I think I’m going to trust the Release Artist, who isn’t a Scholz pseudo, dump the rest, and dump the cover art that credits another orchestra/conductor (who also don’t appear to be Scholz pseudos).
As @Jim_DeLaHunt says - changing who a recording is credited to will not leave orphan recordings. It will just leave confusion for people with other copies of releases with the alternate credits on. Which is why you need good annotations to explain any “fix” you attempt.
Or just run away now while your sanity is still intact.
Not sure about this. Why do you think your release is correct and the others wrong? You need to read a few more covers on a few more releases. Especially the oldest releases.
Usually what happens is something is recorded under one name. And sold. Then the package of recordings is resold and reissued under new names. And then repackaged into compilations with yet more fictional names.
I assume someone has merged many releases together at some point based on some research. If you are lucky it is in the edit notes. If you are unlucky they just looked at a few acoustIDs
Good point - no one around here is sane. The best of editors have to be totally mad to work at the level of details that they do. I assume this is why a corrupted word “brainz” is part of the brandname
Eight of the releases in this RG agree on the Release Artists as Grieg; Slovak Philharmonic, Libor Pešek, except for one release, which only lists Grieg.
Slovak Phil and Pešek are well-established, and not Scholz pseudonyms.
[EDIT: Dammit, it looks like Slovak Phil was used by Scholz at least once]
The artwork also agrees, on those that have art, except for the two “Quintessence” label releases. Those have different conductor and orchestra, both of which may be Scholz pseudos. I’m tempted to put those two in their own RG (if I don’t find an existing one that matches). I initially thought to just dump the artwork, but the label, cat. no., and barcodes match up.
I can’t give you an example right now, but I think I have also seen Slovak Philharmonic and Libor Pešek on Scholzy releases.
I have definitely seen other legitimate artists credited on Scholzy releases. E.g. Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra vs Dresdner Philharmonie (can’t remember who pointed that out to me in edit notes a while back).
1000 Meisterwerke der klassischen Musik is a release with Scholz psuedonyms appearing alongside legitimate names like Alfred Brendel. Leaves me wondering whether I can trust any of the credits that aren’t obviously fake.
