Label scores a Salonen coup

This week, Deutsche Grammophon will announce the signing of a four-year contract with Esa-Pekka Salonen. That the prestigious German record label has wrested the music director of the L.A. Philharmonic from Sony Classical, the company with which he began his career some two decades ago, is stunning news. It represents a new aggressiveness by DG, which recently nabbed young American violinist Hilary Hahn from Sony and young Chinese pianist Lang Lang from Telarc. And the fact that exclusive contracts for conductors are very rare these days only confirms Salonen’s ever-growing prominence on the world stage.

The Salonen deal is but the latest battle in a war over great conductors that Sony (and its former incarnations as Columbia Records and CBS) and DG have fought for decades. In the ‘70s, DG robbed then-Columbia of its most famous and profitable classical artist, Leonard Bernstein. When Sony bought Columbia in the ‘80s, the new Japanese owners showed DG a thing or two by commandeering the Germans’ nearly deified conductor Herbert von Karajan.

Discussions are reportedly still underway about repertory and orchestras for Salonen’s DG CDs. Thus far, only the Berlin Philharmonic has been confirmed. But it is hard to imagine that the opportunity to record Salonen’s hometown band in its new concert hall won’t be overwhelmingly tempting.

-- Mark Swed