HARMONIA MUNDI : <i> The Fancy Classical Firm on the Other Side of the Tracks</i>

It’s situated practically under the Santa Monica Freeway, near the confusingly busy intersection of Robertson and Venice boulevards, cheek by jowl with a typesetting shop, a floral designer and a wholesale butcher. A few steps away there’s an almost unobstructed view of the vast noodle factory which is the neighborhood’s landmark and principal employer.

The wags among the inhabitants call the area “Beverly Hills South.” In reality, it’s a low-rise, relatively low-rent, light-industrial pocket of Los Angeles-almost- c ulver City at its most functionally anonymous. An unlikely location for a fancy musical enterprise with the flossy name of Harmonia Mundi U.S.A.

The operation is the joint responsibility of a quick-witted, highly strung woman from the north of England named Robina Young and a pensive Parisian named Rene Goiffon, whose measured remarks tend usually to convey a sense of foreboding.

Both are in their early 40s and veteran staffers of parent company Harmonia Mundi France, one of Europe’s most respected highbrow, high-tech recording companies.

HM U.S.A., in the mere 5 1/2 years of its existence, has pulled a switch on the notion of European conquest of the New World, basing their activities not on the presumption of Americans’ cultural naivete, but rather on respect for their artistic discrimination.

The company has made its impact neither through crossover repertory nor the Classical Top 40, but with such esoterica as Bach organ music, piano compositions by the contemporary American Milton Babbitt, the orchestral output of British post-Romantic Arnold Bax, medieval choral works and Baroque music in period-instrument interpretations.

The peculiar, rather elitist glamour of HM U.S.A. has been achieved without a single Itzhak, Kiri, Luciano or Vladimir on its roster. Rather, there’s a Robert (pianist Taub); a couple of Nicholases (conductors McGegan and Herreweghe); at least one Rene (in this instance, Clemencic, scholar, conductor and virtuoso on antique wind instruments); an Alfred (surname Deller, the late British countertenor); and a Hildegard: the 11th-Century German abbess-composer, of all people.

With that partial lineup, Harmonia Mundi U.S.A. is able to support a rather astounding statistic: It is responsible for about 20% of the titles of all classical compact discs found in American retail outlets.

In other words, approximately 1,000 of the 5,000 available classical titles are either made (i.e., recorded) or distributed by HM. Not the same as 20% of the gross, but hugely impressive nonetheless.

HM U.S.A. embraces a broad, untraditional musical mix that has been gobbled up by an audience more affluent than numerous, “a clientele”-- Goiffon pronounces it the French way--”of professional people: physicians, lawyers, scientists and, of course, musicians.”

Young, her British-accented tones readily rising in pitch, adds, as if expecting to be challenged, “Ours are serious listeners, not people who use recordings to provide background noises.” With the sound, say, of Babbitt’s jagged pianistic musings or a florid aria from a rare Baroque opera of Lully in mind, one hesitates to doubt her word.

Before any credit can be given Young and Goiffon for all of this bounty, they are quick to point out that the major share of HM U.S.A.’s business remains the distribution of recordings rather than their production.

The trend, however, is beginning to go a bit more toward their own American-made material, such as their recordings of the excellent San Francisco-based Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and its conductor, Nicholas McGegan, which Young personally produces.

HM U.S.A.’s distribution is, in fact, not limited to French or American Harmonia Mundi products. Among the success stories in which Young and Goiffon have played a part is that of Britain’s Chandos label.

Chandos’ original--and hardly diminished--appeal was for listeners at the technological high end of recording.

But the richly detailed Chandos sonics have always been allied to offbeat repertory, by the likes of British composers Bax, Elgar and John Ireland; ballet music by Respighi (ever heard of his “Belkis, Queen of Sheba”?--neither, one would guess, had many of the 10,000 customers who have plunked down upwards of $15 for a copy of the CD); orchestral works of the Irishman Sir Hamilton Harty (better known as a conductor); and the first CD set of the complete Prokofiev symphonies, led by the rising Soviet emigre conductor Neeme Jarvi.

Some of HM U.S.A.’s biggest names are on another label they distribute, Orfeo, a German company recently resurrected after its president walked off with a few million marks of the firm’s assets, creating the kind of scandal in Europe one thought possible only in the American megabuck world of pop.

Orfeo’s artists include conductors Colin Davis, Rafael Kubelik and Carlos Kleiber, singers Margaret Price, Hermann Prey, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and Edita Gruberova.

Another entity under the capacious HM U.S.A. umbrella is Hyperion, a small connoisseur enterprise from Britain, which recently found itself with an unlikely hit: a collection of religious works by the medieval German nun Hildegard of Bingen.

Then, too, Hyperion has the London Fortepiano Trio, an excellent ensemble currently engaged in recording all the Beethoven and Mozart piano trios on 18th-Century instruments.

From France, on the minuscule Ocora label, is another of HM’s unexpected successes: the program called “Hearing Solar Winds”--a rather creepy collection of hummings, groanings, keenings, echo effects and long silences, music (after a fashion) with its origins purportedly in Tibetan religious chant. The brisk sales of this CD attest to the fact that 1960s style far-outism still has its adherents in the materialistic ‘80s.

Unicorn-Kanchana (Young and Goiffon are unable to tell me what--or who--a Kanchana is) is another classy British label that finds its way into American stores courtesy of Harmonia Mundi. U-K’s collection of works by Frederick Delius conducted by the composer’s amanuensis, Eric Fenby, has proven to be a winner--and deservedly so.

Still, Young and Goiffon’s hearts belong ultimately to the flagship label, Harmonia Mundi, a vast catalogue of recordings of largely Baroque Music by such names as Alfred Deller; The Clemencic Consort, whose “Carmina Burana”--not Carl Orff’s 20th-Century barn burner, but the medieval songs of wining, wenching and worshipping that inspired it--almost single handedly put HM on the international map; the French-based vocal/instrumental ensemble called Les Arts Florissants, and the stunning performances of major Baroque religious works led by Philippe Herreweghe.

Young, reciting a list of other labels with which they are involved, interrupts herself: “There is one point I’d like to make right here. When someone makes a record for us it goes worldwide. If you record for the other American companies it stays in the U.S. Or, if you record for one of the major companies in Europe, branches of that company can choose to carry or not to carry your products. Our records are available throughout the world.”

Harmonia Mundi--the name derives from a treatise on the relationship between music, physics and mathematics by the 16th-Century German astronomer Johannes Kepler--was started 30 years ago by Bernard Coutaz, a one-time monk, who still heads the French firm. But its history for present purposes dates from the hiring of Young and Goiffon.

Young found her way from schooling and later teaching in London--she holds degrees from both the Royal Academy and Royal College of Music--to the south of France in 1976, to an area of Provence rich in the performance and teaching of Baroque music.

She settled in the village of Lacoste (site of the ancestral home, it should be noted, of the Marquis de Sade), just down the road from Harmonia Mundi headquarters. Through Coutaz she met the Canadian harpsichordist and HM recording artist Kenneth Gilbert, with whom she conducted a series of master classes, and Alfred Deller, whose academy for the study and performance of old music was situated nearby.

Harmonia Mundi began to rely on her, “as much for my harpsichord, which everybody wanted to use, as for my playing,” she chirps. Coutaz eventually signed her on as a staff producer.

Goiffon, who arrived at Harmonia Mundi in 1974, insists that he is a “plain, simple music lover. I’ve always been crazy about classical music, but I hadn’t worked at it before. So there I was, 27 years old and a graduate of business school. It was time to get a job.”

What was he doing prior to that? “Looking for my truth. So I sent out letters to all the record companies in France. The one that answered was Harmonia Mundi. I became their business manager.”

HM appeals to an exclusive, one might say esoteric audience, with which the label had considerable success from its base in France. Yet Goiffon and Young pulled up stakes to settle in the United States--with rather vague prospects.

“Part of my job was arranging distribution in countries outside France,” Goiffon says. “In America, I worked with distributors in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles. But none of them worked out. There had to be something here under our own authority.”

Young says: ‘We were the prime candidates to run the operation because we knew the company and were the most fluent in English. Other European companies were having trouble with their American distribution, so, we thought, why not get them under our umbrella as well?”

But why locate in Los Angeles?

“The choice was either New York or Los Angeles,” Young says. “Both are business centers, which is more important than that they’re music centers. If we were looking for the early music capital, we would have gone to Boston. The pace of New York, however, was not appealing.”

According to Goiffon, “There was a lot happening in classical recording in Los Angeles. Nonesuch was here then, and there’s Delos. And Angel, of course. Also, we had a lawyer and an accountant here. Some structure. And, anyway, the climate reminded us of Provence.”

If the quite spectacularly smoggy day on which this interview was conducted could have reminded anyone of the clear, bracing--if often furnace-hot--air of Provence, those people must surely have been transformed into true Angelenos. Robina Young and Rene Goiffon have acquired the souls, if not the accents, of natives.