Swedish label
Label Code: LC 17408
Phono Suecia was founded in 1966 in connection with a gramophone record which was being produced for the ISCM festival in Stockholm. STIM's (Swedish Performing Rights Society) recording commitments started earlier, however, in 1948-49, and over the years have come to embrace grants to various record companies in addition to their own recordings. Until the beginning of the 1980s most of these productions were issued by various Swedish record companies. Since then the recordings have been issued on the Phono Suecia label, and from 1990 onwards record productions have been a part of the Swedish Music Information Centre's activities.
The aim of the recordings is to spread information about important music which for various reasons has not otherwise been issued by record companies. The focus is on copyright-protected Swedish works by living composers who are not well represented on record in other ways.
Phono Suecia's repertoire mainly consists of contemporary art music, primarily in the form of composer portraits with orchestral and choral works, as well as chamber music and electronic music. The catalogue also includes jazz, with several recordings of big bands, such as the Radio Jazz Group, Tolvan Big Band, Bohuslän Big Band and Norrbotten Big Band. In certain cases new arrangements of popular songs and other light music are issued on the Favorit label.
Phono Suecia's series of re-releases under the name Phono Suecia/Echo presents older STIM recordings, such as Conducting Composers, for example, a unique collection of Cupol recordings on which composers conduct their own works. These include Wilhelm Peterson-Berger's Violin Concerto and Hilding Rosenberg's Symphonies Nos. 3 and 6.
Starting in 1998 a continuation of the Musica Sveciae series of CDs was undertaken by Phono Suecia in collaboration with the Swedish Radio and the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. The anthology presents Swedish music composed between 1920 and 1945.
Due to its consistently high standards of performance and sound reproduction, and the quality of the information provided in the liner texts, Phono Suecia has on several occasions won the Swedish Gramophone Award as well as the Grammis Award.