Hunting down the undead ghost of classical conductor George Richter

Posted on May 18, 2011 Updated on October 24, 2013

At one point in life I acquired myself a CD with famous works of Edward Elgar: Pomp and Circumstance, Nimrod, Sospiri, the Cello and all that. I found the recording fairly good. The cover stated that the conductor was George Richter handling the London Symphony Orchestra. Googling my way on George Richter I couldn’t say that I found much. I found several references to CDs but not much about the man. London Symphony Orchestra has had a Richter as conductor: Hans Richter. Perhaps George was related? But I could not find any information about that.

I then on 6th December 2009 added George Richter to Wikipedia in the hope that someone would seek more sources. But on the 16 May 2011 a fierce Wikipedia deletionist came by the article threatening to kill poor George due to lack of references, – a cardinal sin for articles about living persons on Wikipedia. Interesting though, the deletionist had diligently discovered one single reference through Google Books: To Jonathan Brown’s (who is he?) book of 2000 “Tristan und Isolde on Record. A comprehensive discography of Wagner’s music drama with a critical introduction to the recordings.”

And now comes the spooky part.

On page xiii Brown describes our George as an “apocryphal conductor”. So what do that mean? That George didn’t get to join in on the Bible along with Mary, Moses and the rest of the band? No. As further on page 215 Brown states that one Wagnerian Richter recording is actually Heinrich Hollreiser and the recording is not as stated with London Symphony Orchestra but rather with Bamberg Symphony Orchestra. Brown – the Wagnerian discographier – had timed the different recordings of Wagner and found that Hollreiser’s recording has been issued under a number of other names: Heinrich Heller, Hans Burg, Ralph deCross, Otto Friedlich, Karl Ritter, Leon Szalar and our George Richter. Likely it seems that also the Elgar recording is not by George Richter but another yet unidentified conductor, perhaps Hollreiser?

Apparently George Richter is an invented name. Why?

My Elgar CD brands itself as an “Apollo Classics” and the company issuing the CD is “Wisepack Ltd.” in 1995. Tracking this company I find that Business Directory North Central London records Wisepack Ltd.’s address as “Unit 12. Latimer Road. London. W10 6RG” with a “PIN Tel.” 0904 049 8229. Their business is “production of records tapes and CDS”. So we are nearing. UK company search Companies House lists two entries for Wisepack: “Wisepack (1992) Limited” incorporated the 24 January 1992 and dissolved 2 April 1996 company number 02680885 with an unknown nature of business. The other entry is and “Wisepack Limited” incorporated 1988 and dissolved 29 September 1998 with company name 02245831 and on the Latimer Road address. Their nature of business is stated as “Publishing of sound recordings”, “Reproduction of sound recording” and “Wholesale electric household goods”. Peeking with Google Street Viewwe might get a glance at the Unit 12 address as it looks today. As far as I can identify the Unit 12 address today is the one with the company “city electrical factors ltd” who describe themselves as “electrical wholesalers, suppliers of electrical equipment”.

Why would the Wisepack company invent a name and not attribute the recording to the right conductor?

Jonathan Brown may give us a hint. Google Books does not show page 216 of the book but another page on the Internet may have listed the information from the Brown book. It reads: “The absence of copyright restrictions may explain why this recording has been issued under so many fictitious names”. My take on this is: The recordings with Wagner and Elgar are in the public domain and several record publishers have taken advantage of this and reissued the recordings. They change the attribution to hide the source of the original recording and thereby inventing the ghost of George Richter. We are dealing with some copyright hanky-panky.

Whether this hypothesis is correct I do not know. In support I would say that the the Wisepack logo looks like something done in DrawPerfect, – not a logo from highly esteemed company. Brown has some reservation about the identification of apocryphal conductors “because there remain a number of recordings attributed to conductors about whom very little, if anything is known”. Still I say we are dealing with a ghost. And more ghosts to come. The Elgar cello concert has a Veronique Desbois at the soloinstrument. She is likely a ghost too.

The ghost of George Richter has also conducted the “Royal Danish Symphony Orchestra” in works by Smetana and Rimsky-Korsakov as well as an overture by Gioacchino Rossini. There are two major orchestras in Copenhagen. In English they are called Danish National Symphony Orchestra and The Royal Danish Orchestra, so which one has the ghost conducted? The Rimsky-Korsakov piece is issued by the Sine Qua Non label that belongs in One Charles Street, Providence, RI, USA. A version of Elgar is apparently also issued by the GR8 label under the brand “Spectacular Classics” (wow what a name!). George Richter continues to issue CDs. As recent as in 2005 a Beethoven CD was published. Here Richter conducted London Symphony Orchestra. You can buy a Richter-Smetana CD at Amazon. This CD also has the work of conductor Henry Adolph, – another ghost according to a Anton Bruckner site

Strange things are going on in classical music. One may begin by reading the Wikipedia article about British record producer William Barrington-Coupe who according to a judge was involved in “blatant and impertinent frauds, carried out in my opinion rather clumsily.” One of his schemes exposed in 2007 involved unauthorised copies of commercial recordings. These were rerelease under his wife’s name, Joyce Hatto – and highly acclaimed. Barrington-Coupe and Hatto are real people – nonghost – though one of them is dead. The conductor in the fraud scheme is holocaust survivor René Köhler. He is likely a ghost – an invention of Barrington-Coupe – and died in 2002. The death of the George Richter has not been announced, so we may continue to hear recordings from this undead ghost, – if he is a ghost. ;-)

(2011-09-21. Minor change: spell correction)