P�ter F�l�p was born in Budapest in 1949. After attending Technical University in Budapest, he worked for a medical research company, Medicor, where he was head of the development section, charged with creation of the CAT scanner. But with a change in the country's political lineup, money for research dried up. F�l�p thereupon started his own business of acquiring and selling records, which he has been doing since 1970. In 1984, he met David Canfield of Ars Antiqua, who has served as F�l�p's mentor in the business to this day. F�l�p moved to Toronto in 1993, became a Canadian citizen, and for many years ran his mail-order record company, Mikrokosmos, from there. Late last year, F�l�p moved back to his native Hungary.
Q: Let's start by stating that your Mahler discography is unequivocally a magnificent achievement. In fact, it is so thorough and so meticulously researched that I was wondering if anything else comparable exists for other major composers.
A: There are some very detailed composer discographies on the Internet, but I don't know of any others in print. They're mostly artist-oriented.
Q: Obviously, this was a labor of love that you have been working on for decades. How were you bitten by the Mahler bug? Was it a particular recording or live performance?
A: It happened in 1974 when I bought a ticket to a live performance of the Fourth Symphony. I was in the habit of listening in advance to the music I would hear at a concert. I bought the only available recording in Hungary at the time-David Oistrakh conducting the Moscow State Philharmonic in a concert recorded live in Moscow. I had never heard anything like it before. A new world opened up to me, and I decided I had to collect all of Mahler's works. It was not easy back then. Mahler was almost unknown in Hungarian record stores. Finally I had a chance to buy them and compare performances.
Q: What prompted you to put out your first Mahler discography back in 1975?
A: In 1975, I obtained a copy of Jerome Weber's Mahler Discography. It was very small, more of a booklet than a book. This served as the basic material for me to work with, but it was not my book. I had to do my own.
Q: Your latest Mahler discography, your third, sells for $180. It's certainly worth every penny, but I wonder how many copies can you expect to sell at that price? Who will buy it?
A: In an optimistic gesture, I had 1,500 copies printed. I hope to sell it to record collectors, Mahler lovers, and libraries.
Q: How does an interested buyer obtain a copy? Is it available in stores?
A: Allegro distributes it in North America, but anyone can order it from the Mikrokosmos Web site [Mikrokosmos.com].
Q: Tell me something about Mikrokosmos.
A: The Mikrokosmos Mail Order Company was established in 1988. My family started the business in Hungary, and our Hungarian origin explains why the company is named after Bart�k's popular piano pieces. In 1993, we moved to Toronto, but we still maintained strong ties to Hungary, including keeping our classical record shop, Concerto, open in Budapest. We get many hard-to-find LPs and 78 rpm records from all over the world, including those made in countries that no longer exist, like the DDR or Czechoslovakia. It's a family operation; my wife does the bookkeeping, my oldest son is my agent in Montreal, my middle son does all the software development, and the small one pastes on the stickers.
Q: How does Mikrokosmos work?
A: The first Mikrokosmos list of rare classical LPs and 78s was released in December 1989. The first one had about 400 items; we now offer about 3,000 items in our free monthly catalog. We send the list by mail to all of our customers, but it can also be found on the Internet on the first day of each month. Five monthly lists are available concurrently. After five months, discs not yet sold go into the sale section, and after that into the last offer section. The mail lists are free, but after six months the computer automatically deletes your name if there has been no sale. Of course, you can continue checking our lists on the Internet, and if you do order something your name becomes active again. Most of the business is done on the Internet. The new list is posted on the net the afternoon of the last day of the month. We try to send the printed catalog so that it arrives at the same time.
Q: Prices are non-negotiable?
A: We apply set-sale price, which means that the first customer who orders the item gets it. We never accept bids for higher offers, nor do we give discounts. If you find the price is a bit steep, just wait a few months and if demand has not been met, the record will turn up in the sale section at a lower price.
Q: Moving Mikrokosmos back to Hungary last year must have been a huge job. How did you ship those thousands of records?
A: Mikrokosmos's warehouse contained 45,000 records. It was loaded into a container and shipped from Toronto to Budapest in just three weeks.
Q: Where do you find all these rare recordings?
A: I have agents all around the world, from America to Africa to Australia, but I also travel a lot myself. I recently returned from Sweden with about a thousand LPs. My best source is my friend and colleague David Canfield, who ran Ars Antiqua for 27 years and now works with me. He does the purchasing in North America. David is also head of Enharmonic Records, a composer and critic. He recently joined Fanfare's staff and is interviewed in this very issue.
Q: Who are your customers?
A: The biggest market is in Japan, but I have many customers also in Europe and the U.S. as well as in many other countries.
Q: And what about your Labelography? What is that?
A: In 1998, Mikrokosmos published the first volume of the classical record label collection under the name Labelography. This was a big step in developing a standard for classical records. We add about 200 new labels to this collection every year. The Labelography is part of our goal to provide detailed information about recordings. So we indicate the recording date (when it is important and known), matrix numbers of the 78 rpm records, stamper numbers for the audiophile records, etc. The Mikrokosmos Labelography contains examples of labels from all the important companies that have issued microgroove classical records. These label examples span the entire LP era, from the first monaural discs issued in 1949 to the digital and digitally remastered LPs of the early 1980s.
Q: Like your Mahler work, is this also a labor of love? Or shall we call it a label of love?
A: When I was young I collected stamps. The Labelgraphy is a bit like dealing with stamps. I like to tinker with it, and it is a huge job, though not successful as a business. I had hoped for more sales.
Q: Getting back to Mahler, you mention in your discography that, to the best of your knowledge, there are just seven recordings in existence that aren't in your personal collection. Are these included in the discography?
A: Actually, the list is now down to six. Since the book was published, I found one of them in Paris a few weeks ago. They are all in the discography. Some of the remaining performances I obtained on CD-R so I was able to determine the timings. Those I haven't found yet appear in the Timings section with a question mark.
Q: You have sent out a memo in search of a "permanent home" for your collection, a Mahler Sound Archive, as you call it. How is this coming along? Have you found a home yet? If not, are there any good prospects?
A: Unfortunately, I haven't had any response yet to my offer for the Mahler Sound Archive. This archive would be a center where all the recordings would be available for listening and where relevant research could be carried out with respect to comparative performances and even comparative pressings of the same release. Any city, library, or organization that accepts this responsibility will certainly be putting its name on the musical map. I just hope that some institute or person will find this offer interesting enough to come forward and establish a permanent home for this unique collection [inquiries at mikro@mikrokosmos.com].
Q: What was the most difficult part of assembling your discography?
A: I decided to print a diacritical edition this time. It was difficult to obtain the required type-setting for some of the characters required in foreign languages.
Q: Did you have to sit down and time all those early recordings that didn't have timings already on the label or on the jacket?
A: Yes, but most of this work was done for the first edition of my discography, which came out in 1985.
Q: Would you venture to reveal your personal favorite recording of each Mahler symphony?
A: Definitely NOT!
Q. Do you have any strong feelings about the various completions of the 10th Symphony?
A: No, but I don't like any them very much. I'm sure that Mahler would have finished it differently. It is always interesting to hear a new version of it, but I have never felt that any of them are really Mahler aside from the two movements he completed.
Q: Do you have any favorite Mahler conductors?
A: Leonard Bernstein and Georg Solti.
Q: What do you do for relaxation, when you're not doing Mikrokosmos work?
A: I watch movies and listen to music, including any new Mahler recordings that come out. I also work on my Labelography.
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