As an executive at Columbia and RCA Records, he popularized the classics for mass audiences by applying the same techniques used to sell pop music.
R. Peter Munves, a record company executive who revolutionized the marketing of classical music, died on Aug. 19 in Glen Cove, N.Y. He was 97.
His death, in a nursing home, was confirmed by his son Ben.
Mr. Munves carved out a moneymaking niche in what for much of its history has been a low-margin, struggling industry, selling classical music to mass audiences by applying the techniques of pop music marketing.
In the 1960s, while at Columbia Records, he created a series called “Classical Greatest Hits” that packaged bits of Brahms, Mozart, Bach and other composers onto single LPs. In 1968 he signed the electronic musician Wendy Carlos to record “Switched-On Bach” — pieces by Bach on the Moog synthesizer.
Both ideas were big hits, commercially if not with the critics. Time magazine reported in a 1971 profile of Mr. Munves that the “Greatest Hits” series “scored a solid bull’s-eye in the market and rang up $1,000,000” in revenues. The “Switched-On Bach” album, Time said, was Columbia’s “all-time best classical seller.”
Mr. Munves went on to produce an album called “Themefinder” — a compilation of 222 well-known themes from classical music that the New York Times music critic Edward Rothstein called a “marketing masterpiece” upon its release in 1981, adding that Mr. Munves was “an inspired producer.”
