Monday, March 7, 2011

A Gallery of Steinweiss Covers, Part 2

For my next installment of Columbia Masterworks album covers by Steinweiss, I present six covers from late 1945-early 1946.  Here are the first two, MM-589 and MM-591:
This cover for the Ormandy Beethoven Ninth (MM-591) is one of two unique Steinweiss designs for the same set.  The other, which I possessed many years ago but no longer do, showed four hands - one white, one black, one red and one yellow - coming from each side of the cover at right angles to touch a globe in the center, all on a light blue background.  This graphic illustration of "alle Menschen werden Brüder" must have been controversial at the time, and may have been replaced by the above, more innocuous cover; however, I have no way of knowing which design actually came first.  To continue with two more covers (MM-596 and MM-604):
MM-604, incidentally, was Issac Stern's debut recording.  To continue, with MM-608 and MM-570:
Though the Ormandy "New World" with its album number of MM-570 would appear to be out of sequence here, it actually was issued after the Franck Symphony, whose individual record numbers are 12312-D through 12317-D, while the Dvorak's are 12328-D through 12332-D.

To be continued....

3 comments:

  1. Very stylish covers! Makes one wish that CDs were in 12" format.
    Thanks!

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  2. Thank you! Really marvelous, with relaxing smooth colors and a taste which is hard to find nowadays. I have appreciated some of these performances and I am glad to see the appearance of their original 78s set.

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  3. Is the designer of these albums jackets credited anywhere? I'm curious as to whom was responsible for these excellent designs!

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