Hans Rott Orchestral Works Vol. 1

[Alan Howe]

This is the source of the cover images:
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/majorgaine

Hmmmmmmm

[Wheesht]

How many people will say when they see these: 'Ah, Hans Rott...' 

[Alan Howe]

None. They'll say: what's this cheesy fantasy stuff doing here?

[Wheesht]

Quite! One does wonder sometimes about the covers of certain CDs...

[Alan Howe]

Smacks of doing it on the cheap.

Would this have been more appropriate?>>



[The Death of Julius Caesar by Camuccini - cropped]

[Gareth Vaughan]

Some record companies have the most absurd ideas about CD cover artwork. For fine examples of how to do it well look no further than CPO or Hyperion.

[Mark Thomas]

I'm obviously in a contrary mood today, but maybe the label used this picture in a bid to interest younger buyers in an impulse purchase of a product which wouldn't normally attract them when packaged in sober images created by centuries-dead artists. After all, the mostly-old crusties like me who buy classical music are a market which is dying off and they need to find younger customers to replace them. I suspect the same reasoning is behind the trend to give classical CDs generic titles like "Idyll" or "Ring of Fire", rather than the traditional composer/work/artists run down on the cover.

[Gareth Vaughan]

Well, I can honestly say that I have NEVER been influenced to buy a recording (LP, cassette or CD) by the artwork on the cover. To me it is totally irrelevant. I used to like the old DG Archiv label LPs which had a completely plain cover with just the details of the composer, work and performers; rather like the covers for Hyperion's Classical Piano Concerto series today. I am interested solely in the music. But I expect I am in a minority.

[Ilja]

Capriccio has something of a track record with this type of album cover; their Braunfels series likewise sports slightly bizarre covers (n.b.: I don't aesthetically mind the ones under discussion here so much, to be honest, compared to that series).


With the few record covers I've designed myself (one was Sterling's Raff Violin Concerto) I always attempted to make it somehow representative of the atmosphere of the music. That doesn't need to be a period painting, either, so long as there is a similarity in mood. You don't put Boecklin's Isle of the Dead on a recording of Franz Schmidt's 2nd Symphony, or Klimt on the cover of a Strauss Waltzes CD.


In fact, the use of period art can backfire as well, as it sometimes does with CPO. An example where it works well in my view is their use of Peder Kroyer's work on the Ludolf Nielsen Symphony No. 2 / Berceuse / Lyrisk Nocturne CD; but I feel it doesn't work so well in early classical work where basically all the CDs tend to look the same due to the similarity of much of the artwork.

[Paul Barasi]

The Suite in E is a significant small and incomplete work. Its core theme was used by Mahler to end his first symphony.

[semloh]

I welcome anything by Hans Rott, and I don't care if it comes wrapped in day-glo cellophane or an old tin can. Although I hate these covers, they certainly grabbed everyone's attention, whether it was a good reaction or bad, and that's supposedly the key to successful marketing. Once seen ne'er forgotten (no matter how much you try)!

[sdtom]

I have already put in a request for a digital copy of the Rott which I hope to receive earlier. Who cares about cover anyway?

[sdtom]

The music is wonderful!!!! I add yet another Hamlet to my collection. The one suite (short one) reminds me of Mahler. Good liner notes on the works. Now I have two by Rott and I am very happy!

[chriss]

I just received the CD of the orchestral works Vol. 1. Not a revelation like the Scherzo of his Symphony but nonetheless fascinating pieces to be found here in solid interpretations by the Gürzenich Orchestra.

[Justin]

Who cares about cover anyway?

It just gives us something to complain about.