Bernstein Conducts Bartók album art
Album art for the 1967 Columbia Masterworks release of Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic Orchestra with Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale, performing Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Two Pianos, Percussion and Orchestra and Music for String Instruments, Percussion and Celesta. The design is uncredited but was likely prepared in-house at Columbia Records.
The cover features a tightly-spaced setting of Akzidenz-Grotesk fett (known as Standard Bold in the US market) with a stripy effect alternating between slightly-offset slices in silver and gold. The extra-sharp acute accent for the ó in Bartók’s name appears to be an after-market creation. The F and i also appear to have been modified for better alignment in Fizdale’s name. The smaller testimonial quotes are set in Helvetica.
The liner notes on the back cover are set justified (presumably on a Linotype machine) in Palatino. The labels on the record itself use the condensed width of Erbar-Grotesk along with a some other workaday sans-serifs like Bell Gothic and Monotype Grotesque.
