[Database last updated on 23 July 2005.]
Please read the detailed instructions if this is your first time.
Not affiliated with Henry's Records in Staffordshire,
England, at http://www.henrysrecords.com/.
Searches are case-insensitive. Only family names are used for people; search for Beethoven, not Ludwig van Beethoven. All spellings are anglicized according to whatever convention we felt was, well, most conventional :-). For example, use Furtwangler, not Furtwängler nor Furtwaengler (or just use furtw if you're not sure and want to play it safe). The article the is not included in titles in any language. For example, search for Mahler's Lied von der Erde, not Das Lied von der Erde.
You can download the raw data files themselves. They are in an XML format designed to be both human-readable and machine-parseable:
We also have technical notes on how the data and website are managed.
HenrysRecords.org is an online catalogue of Henry Fogel's record library.
Henry is president of the American Symphony Orchestra League and former president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and has been collecting records for many decades. All areas of classical music are well-represented, but the collection is particularly strong in early- and mid-twentieth-century operatic and vocal recordings, the conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, and several obscure composers you probably haven't heard of unless you collect them too. I'm Henry's son, and a lifelong beneficiary of the collection. Starting in the late 1980's, we began entering the records into a computer database. After a multi-year cataloguing spree, the whole thing was done, and Henry has kept it up to date ever since as he acquires new recordings. Unfortunately, the one area that still hasn't made it into the catalogue is his opera aria recordings (discs generally devoted to one singer performing a variety of arias and songs), which are a major portion of the collection. He's not ruling out all hope of getting those finished someday, but it is a formidable task because each song on each disc must be typed in by hand, and some of the discs hold ten or twenty arias.
We make no guarantees about the accuracy of the data here, of course, but we try to run a tight ship. If you find any errors, or have suggestions on how to make the site more useful, let us know by emailing henrysrecords@red-bean.com.