CRD at 50

Siblings Tom and Emma Pauncefort are in celebratory mood. They have joined Presto to talk about CRD, the family label started by their father that is this year reaching a half century of releasing music. Graham Pauncefort actually began the company in 1965 as Continental Record Distributors, but the label expanded into recorded music in the mid-1970s, its first release being Thomas Rajna’s recording of Granados’s Goyescas. Since then, CRD has proved a source of quality particularly in the fields of choral, chamber and instrumental music.

A detailed exploration of the catalogue reveals bigger projects such as Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius with the Scottish National Orchestra and Chorus under Alexander Gibson rubbing shoulders with Telemann’s 12 Fantasias for solo violin, played by one of the label’s newer established artists, Maya Magub. Earlier successes include a bevy of early recordings from the Nash Ensemble, the Chilingirian Quartet and Trevor Pinnock, with established house artists including Paul Crossley and Hamish Milne.

Under Emma and Tom’s guidance, CRD has reinvented itself for twenty-first-century methods of music consumption – and will undergo a subtle refresh this month, where the initials will now stand for ‘Classical ReDefined’. In spite of its age, does it now feel like a new label? “Ooh, that’s interesting”, says Emma. “We were speaking about this last week, about staying true to our father's mission and vision – which was to record the unjustly neglected works and support emerging artists. We have been staying true to that vision, but that said we have had the brand refresh, standing for ‘Classical ReDefined’ rather than ‘Continental Record Distributors’, which is a bit of heritage, but doesn't have the same resonance."

"We have refocused in how we’re working as a production house, which is being precipitated by the change in the industry and how we keep the label. The job of a label was recording with good artists, good sound quality, and getting that to consumers. Now the job of a label also needs to be that creative, critical friend and an executive production house. We're always looking at new partners for licensing, and we have started a partnership with the NHS recently.”

“I think we’ve kept the values the same”, agrees Tom, “and one of the benefits was that we never really had a handover with dad because that's not the way it worked. We’ve picked up and run the label using industry experience, but none of that is from the record industry!” Tom is speaking of his own experience as an army major, with experience in financial services. Emma, meanwhile, has been a learning science practitioner with a background in literary criticism and cultural history. “We have used intuition and applied principles to run a label in the record industry”, he says, “being efficient, recognising that relationships are key, and really trying to harness technology, to create good, efficient solutions to all the back-end things.”

There is a noted crossover between what their father Graham would have done, and the current set up. “Everlasting Light, the choral album we’re releasing in July with Bath Abbey, is a case in point”, says Emma. “It’s a mix of twentieth-century greats with some modern composers. Dad was a great advocate of Victorian and Georgian repertoire in particular, along with the early stuff. The Living Fire, our album with The Choir of Jesus College, is with very modern composers, and a lot of women composers, of which we don't have a strong representation in the catalogue."

"Some of the spoken word projects we've undertaken, such as Letters From Scandinavia, with Joanna Harries and Sholto Kynoch, are new too. This album has the Lieder element, which Dad had advocated through Sarah Walker and others in Fauré, Schubert and Schumann. This is a fresh take on what a song album looks like, because the Sibelius and Grieg songs are sandwiched between commissioned works with spoken word and soundscaping. This gets to the heart of thinking about what an album can be now, especially in our digital ecosystem. What’s the album experience seeking to bring? In a Janus way, we’re looking at how we work with artists and distribute onwards, getting the music to people.”

Listeners’ memories of early CRD recordings will alight on albums maintaining that high standard and often filling a gap in the catalogue. While the focus remains on that to an extent, Emma acknowledges a shift. “We've been looking carefully at our A&R strategy, given that we are now in a world where there are lots of recordings of core repertoire in the catalogue. It doesn't mean that we won't revisit it in terms of new formats, having Dolby Atmos mixes for example, but we’re not in the business of being a ‘volume’ label.”

That is clear from the label’s social media feeds, where the love of what they do is immediate and lasting. “We obviously want to keep the record label going but we want to invigorate it too, and it’s got to be financially viable”, says Tom. “We need to diversify revenue streams and find new ones, explore new collaborations, and get out of the mould, do things a bit differently. As there are only two of us, we can try stuff, and maybe fail fast, but we don’t have to report to anybody, so that’s been refreshing and exciting.”

“It’s very glamorous running a label you know”, says Emma, “you’re sat with spreadsheets a lot of the time! As Tom says though, it’s the personal aspect. That came to the fore when we had so many lovely messages when Dad died. He was quite a maverick in some ways and had a very particular personality and way of doing things, but the respect for how he approached things and nurtured his long-term relationships with artists is something we’ve enjoyed getting back in to – for instance with Paul Crossley's Mompou project, due for release in November. It’s something Paul's always wanted to do and now seems to be the moment.”

There are some opportunities to review the past, too. “We found ten or twelve albums that didn’t quite make the cut twenty years ago and never got released digitally”, says Tom. “One of those is a very intriguing album of timpani concertos, with soloist Jonathan Haas and the Bournemouth Sinfonietta, conducted by Harold Farberman. “I believe it got a Penguin Award at the time”, says Emma. “No one else has recorded it since, because timpani concertos are quite specific – but Jonathan, the timpanist, was the connecter with another project that we're in the process of releasing, a four-track EP with two Black American composers, Timothy Adams and Lenny White, the American jazz drummer. It’s his first set of classical works.”

What are their first memories of the label? Tom first. “As a young boy, I remember Dad kept about 8,000 original LPs when we went from vinyl to CD – and we’ve still got them! I remember lugging those around and also going to evensong at New College Oxford. I also remember Sarah Walker and Tom Krause coming to the house for a photo shoot…and there’s a story there, isn’t there Emma?” “I knew you were going to bring that up!”, she laughs. “I must have been about five, and I’ve always liked to chat – and I didn’t quite know privacy boundaries then, and I marched in on Tom Krause having a bath and started chatting to him!” “He said he’s not coming back until we put locks on the doors!” laughs Tom, “because Emma just walked in, elbows on the side of the bath and just chatted to him for fifteen minutes!”

Emma’s memories include CRD often being erroneously known as CD-R in the USA. “I remember the logo, and that’s why we’ve kept it, but I also remember Dad blaring out Elgar’s music and saying how he could hear the Malvern Hills. That triggered my imagination, and he was in a sense looking forward to now, where we’re looking at the timelessness of classical, and how it translates for non-classical audiences. Dad didn’t approach it from an academic point of view.”

“Dad always worked from home, so he was ahead of his time”, says Tom. “His office was just off the kitchen, and he never closed the door, so all conversations could be heard – the characters, the people he would talk to, the companies – you would pick them up. Music was always playing, and people would come to the house a lot. We were totally immersed in it.”

I ask them both for one piece from the past and one from the present / future that means a lot to them. “For me it is Parry’s I was glad”, says Tom immediately, “Dad loved that piece, and we used to sing it together in the church choir in Stanmore. We already had a splendid recording with The Choir of New College, Oxford and Edward Higginbottom in the catalogue, and a couple of years ago we brought out a triumphant version transcribed for military band with the Windsor Chapel Choir.”

“Blessed be the God and Father by Samuel Sebastian Wesley was another favourite of Dad’s”, says Emma, “and that one he did record with New College. Something else I would choose is also choral, which is the Kyrie from the Mass Scala Aretina by Francisco Valls. It is so beautiful and was recorded two years after its rediscovery and performance in Barcelona. It was a 1978 recording, and for me that is a kind of genesis – of dawn opening. It exemplifies what CRD stood for in those early days, and what we’re trying to continue."

"It makes me think of our current project with the violinist Maya Magub. We’ve been doing a series of projects thinking about the violin dancing, and she uncovered these Four Waltzes by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, who's celebrating his 150th anniversary this year. He arranged them for violin and piano, and they've been laying unrecorded all this time. They are very cinematic, and we’re looking to release them on the anniversary itself, on 15th August. I love the Valse Bohémienne, that’s really beautiful.”

With a quickly changing industry, what are their underlying hopes for the label moving on? “Inward looking, a small, successful family label, but outward looking a label that is well regarded and respected”, says Tom. Emma agrees. “We’ve tried to keep our eyes wide open, as it's not the obvious thing to do – to start a new label. I think we are sat at a moment when curation has never been more important, so it’s continuing not just in existence but existing in a meaningful way, with other ventures that distinguish us from other labels.” Does that include physical releases, still? “It’s not quite as binary as that,” says Tom. “That is still important to us, but the default with everything is that we shouldn't just do what we've done before. With every project we tailor our approach, and that includes release strategy. It's different for everything, and can include singles, cover versions and different formats, with nuanced ways of working.”

“Depending on where our artists are and what they want, it can vary from a digital footprint to physical products that are really important”, says Emma. “We find a bespoke approach works well. There is something lovely about vinyl, too.”

Finally, addressing classical music more generally, do they find people are approaching from different directions compared to five, ten years ago, thanks to technology? “In terms of how we’re labelling up our catalogue for twentiy-first-century events, there does seem to be a willingness to look again at what classical has to offer”, says Tom. “However, there is a big hurdle to get over a perception of what classical music is, and what its value is. If you look at Bridgerton, and look at the streaming numbers, they’re absolutely huge. It’s managed to get tens of millions of people streaming classical music on Spotify. Granted they are covers and a different take, but it’s still classical music – and when you start getting into millions and millions, there are real opportunities outside of the traditional. For us, we have the core classical market – but there is a very big percentage that have the propensity to listen to classical in some way, shape, or form. The big question is how we tap into that!”

Emma agrees. “There are composers – Rutter, Einaudi, Richter to name three – who have done incredible things for opening up the shutters and welcoming people in. It’s a balance, between the creative and the commercial viabilities of a project. Who doesn't want to see the streaming numbers tick up, and see people really enjoying it?”

Until 20th August, we are offering 50% off downloads, and up to 25% off CDs from the CRD catalogue.