Some recommended reissued recordings of klezmer music:

LP - Folkways Records, FSS 34021
Klezmer Music 1910-1942
Recordings from the YIVO Archives Compiled and Annotated by Henry Sapoznik, 1981

This is the first modern reissue of Klezmer Music - for many of us, this was THE BEGINNING. It has been reissued in cassette format and more recently as a CD, but I don’t have information about that. Try contacting Smithsonian Folkways, but I recommend the original LP with its extensive booklet of notes.

CD - Arhoolie / Folklyric 7034
Klezmer Music, Early Yiddish Instrumental Music, The first Recordings: 1908-1927
from the collection of Dr. Martin Schwartz, 1997

This is a revised version of an anthology which was issued first on LP in the early 1980s. It was and still is my favorite of all such collections.
In the CD revision most of the pieces have been transferred at the correct speed so they are roughly in tune at normal pitch.

CD - Trikont US-0179 (Germany)
Yikhes, Fruehe Klezmer-Aufnahmen von 1907 - 1939
aus der Sammlung von Prof. Martin Schwartz, 1991

This CD was produced by Joel Rubin in Germany. The notes are entirely in German, but the music selections are very good. The sound is a little over-processed and some people find it difficult or unpleasant to listen
to the sterile tone of these recordings. The pitch of the recordings has not been corrected so some pieces sound in the wrong keys (and tempos!)*

CD - Rounder CD 1089
Klezmer Pioneers, European and American Recordings, 1905-1952, 1993

This CD has several gems, but also few novelty pieces and otherwise marginal items that I could do without.
The pitch of the recordings has not been corrected so some pieces sound in the wrong keys (and tempos!)*

CD - Wergo SM 1621 2 (Germany)
Oytres - Treasures, Klezmer Music 1908-1996
(address: Postfach 36 40, D-55026 Maintz, Germany)

This CD was compiled by Rita Ottens and Joel Rubin in 1999 and it was published jointly with their book on klezmer music history. The notes to the CD are in both German and English. It is an excellent and interesting collection including some of the rarest of klezmer music examples. Again, however, the sound is filtered to such an extreme degree that some people find it difficult to listen to, and the playback speed of some of the pieces has not been corrected.*

These are not the only products of this kind, but they are some of the best.
In addition a number of recordings focusing on particular artists are issued by Global Village. The quality of the transfers tends to be poor and the quality of the material chosen is erratic. But all their products are created out of love and many of them wouldn’t be there at all except for the determined efforts of producer Michael Schlesinger. Their website:
http://www.folkworld.de/20/e/global.html
for an interesting article about Global Village, see:
http://www.folkworld.de/20/e/global.html

* Pitch and playback speed:
It is well-known that so-called “78rpm records” were not uniformly recorded at 78 rpm. In spite of this, many reissue projects fail to correct the speeds of the old disks when they are being transferred or edited. As a result, some pieces will sound faster or slower than the original performance, and consequently they also sound higher or lower in pitch. Sometimes the difference is more than a semitone in pitch, occasionally leading musicians to learn tunes in awkward keys or to have difficulty lerning from the recordings. On LP reissues this is not a big problem as pitch-adjustable turntables are fairly common. But very few CD players have any kind of pitch control, so this can be an important factor in learning from the material which was improperly transferred to CD.

Return to Resources Main Page