Beauty as the mission

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. 

I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: classical music without compromise.

Edgardo Vertanessian and his wife, Marina Rebeka, made a name for themselves early on in their respective musical fields. But before long, both were ready for a change. Together, they launched their own classical music label, Prima Classic, and decided to do things a little differently.

WORLD’s music critic Arsenio Orteza got the inside story.

ARSENIO ORTEZA: Edgardo Vertanessian first got acquainted with the mechanics of recorded sound as a high-school student in Argentina. He still had a typical teenage boy’s tastes.

MUSIC: [“Symphony of Destruction” by Megadeth]

This is “Symphony of Destruction” by Megadeth, one of Vertanessian’s favorite bands at the time. He also liked Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, and German power metal.

But at 18 he got a job at a classical-music studio. And he made what he calls a “mind-blowing” discovery about the roots of his favorite metal musicians.

VERTANESSIAN: All those guys practice with Vivaldi and with Bach, and that's how they do all the—the really, really fast solos, all those scales. And I thought to myself, ‘Wow, this is it.’

Vertanessian was working as an assistant mastering engineer and would’ve continued doing so, but the pay wasn’t great. So he moved to Cleveland and began working for the live-audio giant Eighth Day Sound. He rapidly became an in-demand designer and calibrator of large-scale live sound systems, with satisfied clients including Taylor Swift, Madonna, Jay-Z, and Drake. 

Then, he made another discovery.

VERTANESSIAN: Every time I had a day off, I would go to the opera theater, whatever city I was in, and go to the opera—so in a way, I was paying the bills with live sound, but at some point in life, my heart moved on to opera and classical music.

In 2018, he married the Latvian operatic soprano Marina Rebeka. And together they founded the label Prima Classic.

MUSIC: [“Norma: Casta Diva...Fine al rito” by Marina Rebeka]

This is Rebeka performing a selection from the Bellini opera Norma on Prima Classic’s debut release, Spirito. It’s the first Prima Classic music that anyone heard, and it set the label’s quality bar pretty high.

VERTANESSIAN: Our identity is beauty. Our mission is we distribute beauty in the form of music. And although we do some contemporary, more abstract things, we tend to stay in music that anyone can listen to and find it beautiful.

An example of the “more abstract things” is Gratitude, an album of Latvian compositions performed by a Latvian saxophonist.

MUSIC: [“O Salutaris Hostia” by Oskars Petrauskis]

An example of “music that anyone can find beautiful” is “Daylight,” by the Latvian pianist Dzintra Erliha.

MUSIC: [“Daylight” by Dzintra Erliha]

In case you’re wondering, Prima Classic doesn’t release music only by Latvians. Of its more than 100 albums, about 75% are by musicians of other nationalities. 

But it’s hard to deny that an exceptional amount of exciting music is currently coming from Latvia.

VERTANESSIAN: There are a million-and-a-half people living there. And their output per capita is, I think, is the highest of top-level classical musicians. It's the highest in the planet. You get some of the best singers in the world come from there, opera singers.

Perhaps what most sets Prima Classic apart from other classical labels is its business model.

Every year, thousands of new classical recordings get released. But, because of relatively low consumer demand, the economics only “work” because most musicians shoulder the recording and production costs themselves, leaving labels with the relatively easy—and relatively inexpensive—tasks of manufacturing and distribution.

VERTANESSIAN: And we don't believe in that. We believe in, we're going to take care of it, we're going to produce it, and we gonna do you know, great sound, we’ve got great equipment. We're very particular with edits, we want always the best takes to go into the recording. So if we need a little more time to do it, we'll take more time.

Beauty, in other words, not profit, is the label’s primary goal. And it seems that if you aim for the former, the latter will take care of itself.

MUSIC: [“Gymnopédie No. 1” by Anders Miolin, Ji Wei]

I’m Arsenio Orteza.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.