In the July issue of Gramophone, published earlier this week, David Threasher gives a general thumbs up to Simon Rattle’s new cycle of Schumann symphonies with the Berlin Philharmonic. But beyond the usual reviewers’ obsessions to be scratched is another itch – the Berlin Philharmonic too, following a trend established by the London Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic and Chicago SO, have decided to release music on their own record label. Given the history of the orchestra and its association with DG during the Karajan and Abbado eras, and more recently with Rattle and EMI Classics, this shift takes some getting used to – on anyone’s list of improbable twentieth-first century new realities it’s right up there alongside popes who retire and British people who win Wimbledon.

A few weeks ago I was in Berlin and decided to find out more. Berliner Philharmoniker Media has a suite of offices on Potsdamer Platz through which, as Tobias Möller, the Berlin Phil Media’s director of communication, tells me the Berlin Wall once sliced through the city. And as our conversation progresses, it becomes clear that a wall of separation has been erected between the major record labels and the orchestra’s aspiration to document their work on record.

We’re also joined by Olaf Maninger, the orchestra’s principal cellist, who in his role as managing director of Berlin Philharmonic Media is in charge of the new label and the orchestra’s online Digital Concert Hall. 'Let’s be clear,' Maninger tells me, 'if the major labels were offering a minimum commitment of releasing 20 CDs a year, and with a healthy budget to back that up, this new label would never have happened. But these days that is of course a dream. We see a decrease in the interest of major labels to release discs of symphonic repertoire. One disc on Sony with Lang Lang and another elsewhere with Anne-Sophie Mutter – this does not represent a fair picture of what the orchestra does. And if the principal conductor of our orchestra doesn’t have on disc with us cycles of Beethoven, Brahms and Schumann, then really it’s a disaster.'

The expectation of what used to happen, especially during the Karajan era, still looms large? 'These documents are interesting to all music lovers world wide,' Maninger agrees. 'Our Digital Concert Hall is one answer, and flowing from that is the idea that you can take care of your rights yourself. And then the possibilities are endless and we can properly show the broadness of our orchestral activity. If we want to release music by Lutosławski or Matthias Pintscher we can. If, as a listener, you want digital access only to the Schumann symphonies, that’s fine; but if you’re a serious collector we’ve created this beautifully designed box set for you.'

Downloading the Schumann symphonies costs £18; but the physical product is yours for 50 Euros (approx £40). Back in the day, of course, forty quid would have seemed a perfectly reasonable price to pay for a cycle of Schumann symphonies released on a major label; and, personally, I don’t think that an institution like the Berlin Philharmonic making a statement about the true cost of recording and releasing music is a bad thing. Who doesn’t enjoy gorging on the convenience of cheap box sets consisting of reissued material with the occasional bonus thrown in? But anyone interested in recorded music having a future needs to put their hands in their pocket – convenience comes at a cost. 

In these days of austerity encasing a box-set in luxury linen, or having it open with a magnetic catch, might feel like expensive luxuries too far. But complaints that conventional jewel case CDs are functional at best (at least until you drop them) continue to resonate, a problem that this design savvy package is clearly trying to solve. 

'When we launched the Digital Concert Hall,' Tobias Möller says, 'it was a pioneering project and really we didn’t know how much you should charge for an annual subscription: 5 Euros or 500 Euros? The record label is a natural development, making some of what is available online as a physical product. But again we had no idea how much to charge and I guess we’re about to find out if we got it right.'

'We underestimated,' Maninger says, 'how difficult it would be to construct a CD Box set from scratch. And we had some fantastic design ideas, but then realised we would need to charge 600 Euros. This box costs approximately ten times the price of a conventional CD package. But we wanted to try it. We think enough people will want the Schumann symphonies on CD, with an extra Blu-ray disc that gives you access to the cycle on video, with backstage interviews, and a very nice booklet. For the cover art we quickly decided, please no German forests! We commissioned the floral motif you see on the front cover which is used in various ways throughout the box.'

I ask about Rattle’s relationship with EMI Classics. There have been mutterings that the orchestra was jumped into creating their own label because Rattle and Warner Classics (who bought EMI Classics last year) have parted company. Rattle’s last recordings for EMI Classics were Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony and Bizet’s Carmen, while Rachmaninov’s The Bells and Symphonic Dances came out on Warner Classics without too much ceremony. 'To be transparent, these Schumann symphonies should have been one of the last projects on EMI,' Maninger says, 'but the label turned us down, saying Schumann wouldn’t sell. But we had already been talking about doing something ourselves within the orchestra, and when EMI was sold, and the contracts came to end, suddenly it became very easy.'

The orchestra’s own 2012 DVD release of Rattle conducting Bach’s St Matthew Passion was, Möller fesses up, an attempt to get the measure of the market, and I end by asking about the future. 'Harnoncourt’s cycle of Schubert symphonies will come next,' Maninger tells me, 'and we’re hoping to release it by the end of this year. We also want to release Simon’s cycles of Sibelius, Lutosławski and Beethoven symphonies, and certain important concerts, especially Abbado’s last performance with the orchestra when he conducted Mendelssohn and Berlioz. This all depends on how this first box sells. We need a bit of money to do the next project; but no one is going to get mega-rich.'

Before arriving at Berlin Phil Media, over breakfast I trawl through the extraordinary timeline on the Berlin Philharmonic’s website. How many people know that Aaron Copland, Michael Tippett and Karlheinz Stockhausen gave concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic? Could the BPO’s label now be a platform through which this hidden history of an orchestra that for so many years was dominated by a single personality could be revealed? 'Yes, the possibilities are exciting,' Maninger concludes. 'You wouldn’t do this kind of expensive set for Stockhausen; it would lose too much money. But the point is we could release Stockhausen if we wanted to – now we have the freedom to do that.'