Label

• The Pianists
• Mainstream Jazz
• Big Bands
• The violinists

• Jazz Meets The World
• The European scenery
• Singers Unlimited

• Orchestras for entertainment music
• Avantgarde
• Classic

MPS  - these three letters create a magic sound for music friends which is of course due to the outstanding recording quality of the jazz and classic productions. Around 1000 records have emerged under SABA and MPS. Primarily jazz, but also folk and dancing music, regional sounds and classic. 

Originated of music productions under the name of SABA, the MPS label upon its official foundation in April of 1968 became quickly acknowledged and received extraordinary respect due to its first class repertoire. From Dixieland to avant-garde, from ragtime to jazz rock, from bebop to bossa-nova, the records released here set new standards with their brilliant recording technology.

MPS as primarily being a label for pianists, the list of the recorded musicians is not only long but also of melodious sound: Monty Alexander, Count Basie, Milt Buckner, Jacki Byard, Eugen Cicero, Wolfgang Dauner, George Duke, Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, Erroll Garner, Friedrich Gulda, Earl Hines, Joachim Kühn, Oscar Peterson, Alexander von Schlippenbach, George Shearing, Martial Solal and Mary Lou Williams. The list may easily be continued by many more prominent names.

MPS boss,  Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer, in short HGBS,  had a special love for piano jazz and was himself an amateur on the instrument. He discovered his passion when during world war two he listened to by Nazis forbidden military radio broadcasts.

HGBS, grandson of the SABA radio manufacturer joined the company in 1951, where he tried to find solutions for electric acoustic problems, particularly with tape recorders. SABA tape recorders, optimized by him became soon a sought after object because of their extraordinary quality.

At the same time he started to record music himself and experimented during the fifties with musicians like Horst Jankowski, Hans Koller and Albert Mangelsdorff. In 1960 HGBS became SABA’s managing director for technology and just one year later he began with the development of the SABA-mobil, a pioneering combination of automobile radio and cassette recorder entering the market in 1963. For this new playing device music cassettes were needed which were produced on short hand notice, in the early sixties amounting to 20 releases of jazz and entertainment music.    

At that time, many concerts in the HGBS home were staged. Musicians like Duke Ellington, Oscar Peterson or Teddy Wilson were guests for private recordings. Oscar Peterson was in Villingen once a year to be recorded by his friend HGBS. However, these brilliant recordings could not be released until 1968 by which time Peterson’s contract with Verve had ended. For several years after that, Peterson recorded for the MPS label exclusively.

In 1968 the American GTE (General Telephone & Electronics) became the new owner of  SABA since smaller consumer electronics companies in the size of SABA could hardly compete on the international market. GTE, having no interest in the recording business gave Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer the starting signal for his own MPS music production including the hitherto SABA-releases. By late 1968, 142 LPs had already been issued among them the first four albums of the Oscar-Peterson-series “Exclusively For My Friends” which not only were best sellers but also received highest acclaims by the jazz critics.

Three years later, MPS with around 400 titles on the market of prominent musicians on the European jazz scene such as Stephane Grappeli, Friedrich Gulda, Rolf and Joachim Kühn, Albert Mangelsdorff, Hans Koller, Wolfgang Dauner and Volker Kriegel plus the multinational Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band.

HGBS had already been an internationally accepted expert for piano recordings (which had also been the reason for Friedrich Gulda, the piano virtuoso from Vienna to work on an exclusive basis with the label in Villingen for several years). Numerous MPS records were bestowed with awards like the Grand Prix of the Montreux Jazz Festival, the Grand Prix of the French Academy Du Disque or the award of the German Academy for records. Music fans and critics both were in total agreement that MPS stands for MOST PERFECT SOUND.