Philips Classics Records was started in the 1980s as the new classics record label for Philips Records. It was successful with artists including Alfred Brendel, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Mitsuko Uchida, Julian Lloyd Webber, Sir Colin Davis and Andre Rieu.
A notable product released under the label is the 180-CD The Complete Mozart Edition, featuring all works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart known at the set's publication in 1991 for the bicentenary of the composer's death. It has been re-released as the Complete Compact Mozart Edition.
Parent Universal Music merged the label into Decca Records. The name Philips Classics still exists but appears on no new recordings, and the Philips Classics Internet presence is within Decca's website.
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This picture, once, resembled thee.”
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“Although crowds gathered once if she but showed her face,
And even old men’s eyes grew dim, this hand alone,
Like some last courtier at a gypsy camping-place
Babbling of fallen majesty, records what’s gone.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)