Influential men in the classical music industry.

Looking at the classical recording industry the "big names" are all gone. The major companies, even fewer since the EMI takeover, are run by acountants and those like the former owner of EMI who think they can make a quick buck out of the business. These companies no longer have their key producers and recording engineers but subcontract everything out so losing their "house style". One has only to think of Decca's John Culshaw who put the company on the map for classical recordings of the highest quality or the irascible autocrat Walter Legge who founded the Philharmonia after the war to be EMI's house orchestra and who would infuriate his bosses by setting up expensive recording projects without their prior approval. Then there was Richard Itter who set up Lyrita to record little known British works, almost all of them previously unrecorded, using Decca's production teams. They were not exactly million sellers and using top orchestras and performers I doubt he can have made any money out of it but he obviously had a genuine affection for the music and thought it deserved to be better known.

Today we do have our Chandos, Hyperion, Naxos etc who are also to be congratulted for bringing us many previously unheard works but not perhaps with quite the panache of the big name performers who once dominated the major labels but then perhaps that's because the music business itself has changed over the years.