ABSTRACT
Rachmaninoff's wishes, Edison seems to have issued all three takes of each record, but those who diligently track down the alternatives will find only minute differences of performance. Rachmaninoff himself, however, was annoyed by the issue of recordings he had not authorized and by the lack of a satisfactory formal contract, and on 21 April 1920, a year almost to the day after he had begun work for Edison, he signed an exclusive five-year contract with the Victor Company to record twenty-five pieces, with a guaranteed annual advance against royalties of $15,000. Five days later Rachmaninoff was at work in Victor's Camden studio, beginning an association with the company that was to last uninterruptedly for twenty-two years.
