About Us:

NORBECK, PETERS & FORD, in business since 1972, has been selecting and selling 78s, LPs, and finally CDs of historical interest, precisely because we believe in the quality and stylistic authenticity of historically important performances which are rarely equaled, hardly surpassed. We sorely lament the state of the contemporary classical music business that must churn out performance after performance (often repeating over-exposed popular repertoire), glutting the market with inferior performances simply to offer something 'new' in the concert halls and the catalogues. To counter this unfortunate trend, we seek out the more obscure performances (frequently 'live') of the past, and support the excellent transfer to CD format of historical material previously available only on 78s, LPs or private tapes, sometimes previously unavailable in any format. Frequently this means we must import privately-produced, limited edition CDs, often at a greater cost than one would have to pay in a chain record store. We fervently believe in our product and service, and in our mission to offer our alternative to mediocrity. We sincerely thank you, our loyal collector-friends, for supporting our endeavor and committed belief.

“Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.”

This truly is our business creed since 1972. It is so refreshing to know that we carry on his fine spirit in our own special corner of the world.

“In my opinion, the firm of Malibran deserves the Légion d'Honneur for the services it has rendered to French opera and to the art of singing. Malibran has brought out a constant stream of discs of operas that are otherwise unobtainable. Throughout the nineteenth century and right up until the post Second World War period, French composers fed the twin Paris opera houses with a diet of new operas....The closure of the Opéra-Comique in 1972 and the withering of the provincial opera house dealt a fatal blow to the entire French operatic tradition. The fine French singers who were once so plentiful have become an endangered species. Even if there were a desire to revive this repertoire, it would be very hard today to cast the operas appropriately. This is where the Malibran discs may play an important historical rôle. They enable us to hear this neglected repertoire in idiomatic performances given by the last generation of singers who really understood how they should be sung.”



“By the 1970s…the classical vocal field was clearly in a state of flux. Changes in singing style had become more noticeable, problems had arisen in casting even standard operas because of the lack of suitable voices, the possibility of electronically enhanced sound in opera houses was rumored, and the growing interest in music styles was already tending to flood the music schools, concert halls, and opera stages with putative counter-tenors and white-voiced, vibratoless sopranos. Nearly all the national vocal schools had vanished, leading to a plethora of mostly homogenized, generic voices. Their owners, while often technically proficient, tended to be anonymous sounding….audiences were – and still are – effectively deprived of hearing many of the most charismatic and technically accomplished musicians of the past hundred years…[among them] the most important singers of the century who had left us recorded evidence of vanished styles and national characteristics.”



"...in the new millennium, technology has produced 'a kind of synthetic perfection...in which hundreds of digital edits create an aural product that sometimes bears little relation to music presented in the concert hall. What's often lost is the sweep and spontaneity of the original performance, not to mention the warmth that allows music to touch our souls'."



"About 40 years ago I began work on a book which was eventually published ten years later, called THE GRAND TRADITION, and subtitled '70 Years of Singing on Record: A Critical Study’, it left off in 1971, and since then people have been good enough to ask, with some persistence, 'When are you going to bring it up to date?' Alas, the cheerfully vague reply now dries on the lips. There were indeed times when good intentions took a more active form and a way forward glimmed hopefully... and what has happened in these last 30 years?... Since 1970, the relativism, which even then was making itself felt, has insidiously worked its way into the commonly assumed habits of thought. The validity of critical discrimination between the great and the good is undermined, the terms themselves being seen as questionable, if not meaningless."

Click here to learn more about us in our interview from Business Profile Vermont:

Contact Us:

Norbeck, Peters & Ford
59 Congress Street
St. Albans, VT 05478

Phone: (800) 654-5302 or (802) 524-7673 (from 10-5pm Eastern time)

To email: Please use the link below to send us a message. Usually email is answered within 24 hours, unless it takes longer to get an answer to your particular email... please allow up to 3 days for an answer.


norbeckpetersford@gmail.com

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