In the golden age of orchestral recording – the 1950s cusp between mono and stereo – American labels piled into London and Vienna after an aggressive union priced their own musicians out of work. At Abbey Road, players worked 30 days on the trot, three sessions a day, to feed a burgeoning market for classical music. In Vienna, the Philharmonic (exclusively contracted to Decca) performed under six different names for other labels.