Columbia Masterworks was a record label started in 1924 by Columbia Records. In 1980, it was separated from the Columbia label and renamed CBS Masterworks. In 1990, it was revived as Sony Classical after its sale to the Sony Corporation. History When Columbia Records undertook the project of releasing great classical music for domestic sale in America, the label was still a year away from an "electrical" recording process. In November 1924, the first eight releases had been recorded acoustically. These first eight sets included five symphonic recordings—Beethoven's Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, Dvorak's "From the New World", Mozart's E-Flat Major (No. 39), and Tchaikovsky's "Pathetique". Three recordings by quartets were also part of that initial offering. More releases followed in March 1925, and a staggering 18 sets were added that fall. The prices of these sets varied with the number of included discs, from $4.50 to $10.50. Under the leadership of Columbia's president Goddard Lieberson, who later added the rest of the Columbia label to his portfolio, a great many notable classical artists made contributions to the Columbia Masterworks library, such as the conductors Leonard Bernstein, Eugene Ormandy and George Szell; pianists Walter Gieseking, Oscar Levant and Glenn Gould; and the organist E. Power Biggs. Composers Aaron Copland and Igor Stravinsky also appeared conducting their own works. Broadway albums In addition to classical music, Columbia also issued cast recordings, soundtrack albums, and spoken-word recordings under the Masterworks name. One of the first spoken word albums of historical significance was the Masterworks release of ten scenes from the Mercury Theatre's Broadway production of Caesar (Columbia Masterworks Set No. 325), recorded in March 1938 and released in 1939. Sales were such that Columbia engaged Welles and the Mercury Theatre to produce four Shakespeare plays (Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar and Macbeth) for the phonograph in 1939 and 1940. The sets were opulently bound and included a hardcover book. The first wildly successful spoken word album was a 1948 Masterworks entry, the first I Can Hear It Now album (Columbia M-800 and ML-4095), edited by Edward R. Murrow and Fred W. Friendly and supervised by former CBS staffer J.G. Gude. The album would lead to three sequels, the Hear It Now program on the CBS Radio Network in 1950 and the CBS-TV successor, See It Now, in 1951. Columbia Masterworks was also the first recording company to release an album