It was in 1964, as JP (“young parishioners”) of the Croix-d’Ouchy in Lausanne (Vaud), that brothers André and Olivier Buttex, aged 18 and 20, made their first recording for disc, on a professional-standard machine built entirely by the younger brother. Pressed in 200 copies under the Philips label, and distributed primarily in the parish, this super-45 rpm (EP) includes organ pieces, including a creation by the performer, 19-year-old Cristian Barblan, and three negro spirituals by the young parish group Les Compagnons de la Bonne Nouvelle. The main benefit of the operation is to have brought together and stimulated the participants to achieve a quality production. The financial profit, around fifty francs, was reinvested in the organization of a competition for the composition of Christian-inspired songs, calling on both creators (of all genres, from classical to “yé-yé” – it’s the times!) and performers (choirs, singers, orchestras). That’s when the name “Voix dans l’Eglise” was chosen, based on the conviction that there are voices (poetic, musical) in French-speaking Switzerland that deserve to be heard, and that the Church is, or should be, a welcoming and encouraging place for them. The competition is well covered by the media. Over thirty unpublished compositions are received, including hymns that will later appear in the Psalter of the Swiss French Reformed Churches. The four selected songs also appear on a 45t. EP, this time under the VDE label. The logo was based on a project proposed by Pierre-Albert, the 3rdButtex brother, 16, totally deaf since the age of 6.
The contacts established set in motion collaborations with young Swiss French-speaking singers of the time (Claude Ogiz, Gabby Marchand, Stéphanie, Laurent Rebeaud, among others), as well as with the Compagnons du Jourdain, pioneers of the negro spiritual in French-speaking Europe, who recorded their 30 cm album “Bois d’Ebène”, and the White Gospel Four. To accompany the recording of the latter group, an excellent young musician from Geneva, still unknown to the public but whose reputation was spreading rapidly in musical circles, was hired: Alain Morisod.
Pianist Denise Bidal, one of Lausanne’s leading musical personalities, lives in the same building as the Buttex brothers, and has known them since birth. When they asked her to record classical music, she suggested nothing less than recording the Trio she formed with violinist Hansheinz Schneeberger (Basel) and cellist Rolf Looser (Biel), and for “firsts”: Schumann’s Trio No. 3, then unreleased on record, and Willy Burkhard’s Trio Op. 43, a premiere! This was done on two synchronized mono machines, so that they could then be transferred to stereo.
These will be followed by a recording on the organ of Lausanne Cathedral with André Luy, previously unpublished harpsichord pieces by William Byrd with Jean-Paul Liardet, and the complete Bach Cello Suites with Rolf Looser, as well as concert recordings.
A meeting was to give a major boost to the classical music sector. Claude Maréchaux, a schoolteacher and organist with a passion for recording, got in touch to propose a collaboration. This led to recordings of concerts by the Orchestre des Collèges lausannois conducted by Jacques Pache (with soloists Eric Tappy and Pierre-André Blaser, Christiane Jaccottet on harpsichord and André Luy on organ), or by the Maîtrise d’Orbe conducted by Michel Jordan with Mozart’s Piccolominimesse, then unavailable on record, followed by two large-scale productions with the Chœur universitaire de Genève led by its American-Chinese conductor Chen Liang-Sheng: in 1971, Handel’s oratorio Saul, in its original English version then unreleased, for soloists, choir and orchestra (3-disc box set), and in 1972 Mendelssohn’s completely unknown Psalms 42, 95 and 115, also for soloists, choir and orchestra (two discs). The budget was enormous: although the works were prepared in conjunction with the concerts, the recordings were made in sessions, and the orchestra (Orchestre de la Suisse Romande – but the name cannot be mentioned, due to the exclusive contract with Decca!) and soloists had to be paid for, as well as the making of the discs. The risk was considerable, a folly for the household budget of Olivier, then a student, married with two children, who relied entirely on his wife Dina’s modest salary. With immense loyalty, willpower and self-sacrifice, Dina took on her full-time professional work, the housework, the garden, the children, and a host of other tasks to help her husband, such as preparing parcels and cutting record labels (not to mention, later on, all the helping hands expected of a pastor’s wife). Indeed, to save on production and advertising costs, the acquisition of an old offset printer’s machine, a drill with a hollow worm and a cutter with a punch made it possible to print record labels on special paper, as well as paper, envelopes and advertising, and later cassette labels and jackets.
Fortunately, if the losses are there, they are limited, and there is the satisfaction of being able to share such beauty, that of Hugues Cuenod singing David in the “Saul”, or of these Psalms which have not been played since Mendelssohn’s time and which are now being heard all over the world.
Collaborations with André Charlet (Chorale du Brassus, Chœur Pro Arte), Robert Faller, Robert Mermoud, Jean Balissat, Michel Corpataux, Jean-Jacques Rapin, and other conductors of top-quality choirs or brass ensembles have produced some fine recordings, often including original works. This is also the case for chamber music recordings, with musicians such as Guy Fallot, Jozsef Molnar, François Perret, Roger Elmiger, Micheline Mitrani, Brigitte Buxtorf and subsequently hundreds of others, including flutists Gabriel Garrido and Sefika Kutluer and pan flutist Michel Tirabosco.
Poet and actor Gil Pidoux, who took part in the Compagnons du Jourdain’s “Bois d’Ebène” recording, proposes a series of recordings of literary and poetic texts. The Paroles collection begins with the publication of archives by C.-F. Ramuz. After “La voix de Ramuz” comes “La voix de Gustave Roud”, with texts recorded by the author in a small Swiss army mattress cage found in the basement, cobbled together especially for him to avoid the room’s excessive reverberation, followed by those of Richard-Edouard Bernard, Daniel Simond, Edmond Gilliard, Vio Martin, Pierrette Micheloud…
Playing the organ part for the recording of Handel’s oratorio Saül, Guy Bovet then proposes a collaboration for a series of historic organs, from Switzerland, and later from Spain, Mexico, the Philippines… Each time, the repertoire is chosen according to the instrument. The series begins with the Valère organs, the oldest in the world still playable, and the Robertsbridge Codex, the oldest known piece of original keyboard music. Three of these discs have been awarded the Laser d’or by the Académie du disque français.
At the request of René Klopfenstein, conductor and director of Septembre musical de Montreux and the Clara Haskil Competition, the winner of the 1973 Competition, American pianist Richard Goode, is recorded with the Kammerorchester der Wiener Symphoniker. The other two finalists were of such a high standard that a recording with each was also organized, for solo piano: Mitsuko Uchida and Brigitte Meyer. At René Klopfenstein’s request, a new name was chosen for the VDE classical collection. To keep the same logo with the rooster, Gallus was chosen, but just before going to print, it turned out that this brand already existed in the canton of St. Gallen. So Gallo was chosen. A VDE customer, a graphic designer at Bobst enterprise, spontaneously and generously offered his services to design the logo. A few years later, it transpired that Gallo was also the name of South Africa’s largest record company… But the matter was settled without a hitch at a Midem meeting in Cannes.
The personal commitment of oboist Jean-Paul Goy gave him the opportunity to make what conductor Armin Jordan would later claim as one of his finest recordings: concerti by Italian composers, with the Orchestre de chambre de Lausanne. He would later record Mozart’s flute concertos with Alexandre Magnin.
With Armin Jordan, there are still numerous recordings in the Paris region with the Kammer Ensemble de Paris organized by violinist Jean-Claude Bouveresse, or in Geneva with the Fidelio Ensemble, including many works for the first time. Moments of happiness, in the sharing of friendship, and in the common tension towards the blossoming of the deepest beauty of the works served.
When Professor Philippe Muller of Neuchâtel approached Perspectives Romandes et jurassiennes to collaborate on works by composers from the French-speaking part of Switzerland, this opened up a rich exchange of ideas: with René Gerber of Bevaix and Jean Daetwyler of Sierre, in particular, who completed the range of “tonal music” composers in the catalog at the time, including the subtle Bernard Reichel. Each with his own instantly recognizable style, they are a living contradiction of the assertion that “traditional” music has said it all, and that to avoid a dead end, it is imperative to follow the new paths of serial or aleatoric music.
A long-standing friendship with René Gerber, a living encyclopaedia of the art world, spurs us on to find solutions for recording orchestral works. This would be in Romania, following contacts made through the leader of the folk group Frunza Verde, which presents traditional Romanian music in Swiss schools and recorded one of the first 45t. VDE. On several occasions, the Craiova Philharmonic Orchestra travels to the capital Bucharest to record CDs of works by René Gerber (including one with soloist Kim Walker on bassoon, and another with trumpeter Paul Falentin), Bernard Reichel, Marc Briquet, Otmar Nussio and Julien-François Zbinden, under the direction of conductor Modest Cichirdan. Just after the revolution, it was with the Bucharest orchestra, then in Poland, Moldavia, and later in Sofia and Volgograd with Swiss conductor Emmanuel Siffert. Siffert, who began his collaboration with VDE-GALLO in his early twenties, conducting the young Orchestre de chambre de Fribourg – later to become Jeune orchestre de chambre suisse and then Orchestre de chambre suisse – immediately agreed to discover these Swiss composers, unknown to him at the time, and took a passionate, long-term interest in them. This is how orchestral works by René Gerber, Alexandre Denéréaz, Jean Balissat, Laurent Mettraux, David Chappuis, Allardyce Mallon, Alphonse Roy, Bernard Reichel, Fabio Maffei, Aloÿs Fornerod, Otto Albert Tichy and others came to be recorded, during travels and under conditions that were sometimes as incredible as they were epic, and in some cases involving an incredible amount of editing (up to 1,800 cuts for one CD!). All this with the means at hand and without subsidies.
In classical music, the names of such composers as Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, Ernest Bloch, Raffaele d’Alessandro, Jean Perrin, Samuel Ducommun, Paul Mathey, Roger Vuataz, Alexandre Rabinovitch-Barakovsky, Eric Gaudibert, Jean Froidevaux, Eric Schmidt, Kurt and Christophe Sturzenegger and, of course, Frank Martin and Arthur Honegger, as well as the astonishing Caroline Boissier-Butini (33 years before Clara Schumann (!), rediscovered thanks to the work of the enthusiastic and competent musicologist Irène Minder-Jeanneret, who devoted her doctoral thesis to her), and for the German-speaking part of Switzerland Peter Mieg, Klaus Cornell, Urs and Richard Flury, Heinrich Schweizer, Alfred Felder, Jan Beran, Frédéric Bolli, Jost Meier, and many others in collaboration with the “Musik in Luzern” series of productions.
While Swiss musicians feature prominently, the catalog also includes a wealth of recordings by composers and performers from other countries.
Another contact is the source of a fruitful collaboration. Laurent Aubert is a member of the early music ensemble Athanor, and offers the world premiere of songs by Thibaut de Champagne. The very fine disc is published. An excellent musician and connoisseur of early and traditional music from all over the world, Laurent Aubert is hired by the Musée d’ethnographie de Genève to develop its music section. His first task was to dust off the music archives collected by the ethnologist Constantin Brailoiu when the latter was director of the museum, and then to prepare the re-release, on vinyl (CDs were in their infancy), of the Collection universelle (boxed set of 6 discs in album sleeves with a voluminous booklet) and the Collection suisse (boxed set of 2 discs with booklet). This first collaboration between the AIMP (Archives internationales de Musique populaire enregistrée) of the Musée d’ethnographie de Genève, and VDE, was followed by many others (over a hundred), but now in CD form, with recordings generally made expressly for the project. The very high scientific quality of these productions, produced by connoisseurs of each of the regions concerned, with well-documented texts and related photos, is recognized with each release. The collection has been awarded the Grand Prix International Charles Cros on several occasions, as well as distinctions in numerous specialist journals. The collaboration continued for several years under the direction of Madeleine Leclair, who took over at MEG from Laurent Aubert, now retired.
Songs featured strongly in the early catalog, alongside recordings of choirs, brass bands and accordion (Nono Muller), and fine work by the Petits Chanteurs de la Cathédrale de Lausanne conducted by Gabrielle Mudry. However, we should mention the fine albums published with Léo Devantéry, Pierre Chastellain, Maxime Piolot, Jack Rollan, Antoine Auchlin, Dida Guigan and the group Déroute chronique (Jean Villard Gilles revisited). She works alongside folk groups (Filidh Ruadh, Filigrane, Tamatakia), jazz groups (Savannah, Grand Eustache, Atriaux, Jérôme Berney, Les Anes rient de Marie), more classical recordings for harmonium, guitar, lute, harp and glass harp, and children’s songs for parishes.
VDE-GALLO has had the pleasure and honor of publishing the official CD recordings of the Fête des Vignerons 2019.
The “Alix raconte” collection, by Alix Noble-Burnand, presents biblical tales and stories that have been very well received by audiences of all ages. Le Noël de Monsieur Crochu, a tale with a musical theme, won the Grand Prix international de l’Académie Charles Cros.
A few DVDs, on the life of musician Jeanne Bovet, or a puppet show “Mozart on the clarinet” by Michel Poletti and Gil Pidoux, complete a catalog which, in 2025, includes over 1,700 titles.
The “Lausanne-Musique” publishing house is part of VDE-GALLO, and manages published works in the form of scores and, above all, recordings. The acquisition of works by René Gerber and Bernard Schulé from Editions Pizzicato in 2024 is intended to make more scores by these two composers available to interested performers.
Established in Lausanne in the early days, with a secretariat in the parents’ kitchen, a recording studio in the cellar and stock in the galetas (6thfloor without an elevator!), VDE’s head office was moved from avenue d’Ouchy to the city center, in a small rented office in the attic of the Terreaux church. It was in this area, with brief interruptions, that part of the business remained for almost fifty years, with a store and a production office with a staff of five at its peak. Another part of the business, often the main one, was regularly located in Olivier Buttex’s home parishes: Donneloye, St-Prex, Montpreveyres, Denezy, while since 1988 part of the stock has been stored in a barn in Sassel. VDE has taken part in the training of some fifteen apprentices.
In 2017, the almost simultaneous termination of the leases on the Denezy and Lausanne premises meant that a solution had to be found quickly. Providentially, stocks, office and accommodation can be moved to Bioley-Magnoux, where available premises can be rented from the founder-animators of the Jonas Foundation, with which VDE-GALLO has been linked since the beginning.
Also in 2017, VDE-GALLO acquired the label, stock and catalog of Société discographique Cascavelle, at the latter’s request. Founded in the 90s in Geneva to take over the ongoing productions of the French company Erato when the latter went bankrupt, and particularly those linked with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and its conductor Armin Jordan, and with the Ensemble vocal de Lausanne and its conductor Michel Corboz, Cascavelle has published a magnificent catalog, which deserves to remain available and alive. Laurent Worms, retired from the record market where he worked with the biggest labels, has given his advice and support to Cascavelle and continues to do so for VDE-GALLO, ensuring from Paris, with competence and generosity, a promotional work for new releases.
A general partnership at the outset (A. and O. Buttex), the company became a sole proprietorship when André left in 1984, when the latter, no longer directly involved in the business for many years, temporarily went abroad to pursue his professional work. To ensure continuity, the company will become a limited liability company in 2021.
Musical production is unique in that, more than any other, it depends on the medium. For centuries, a book has been directly accessible to the reader, a score to the musician. But who still listens to a recording on a cylinder, a 78 rpm record, a wire, and now magnetic tape, cassette, vinyl, minidisc? The change in technology means that in just a few years, a stock of tens or hundreds of thousands of sound carriers is wiped off the market: it’s as if production no longer existed. Everything would have to be republished. Dematerialized distribution is a partial solution to this problem, even if a new production still often includes a physical support.
Distribution is a tricky business, especially for productions that often appeal to a limited audience. Maintaining a network of distributors on several continents is a daunting task, in the face of all-too-frequent bankruptcies, mountains of unpaid bills, and a terrible drop in sales volumes. However, it is necessary in order to obtain a few reviews in specialized music magazines, which in turn make quality works and interpretations known and recognized. More practical, distribution by download or streaming does not, however, compensate for the decline in sales of physical media. The entire CD catalog is presented here, as well as most of the productions from the first 20 years that only exist on vinyl, all thanks to the meticulous and persevering work of son Jean-Marc Buttex.
The Internet also provides a few surprises. In 1998, E. & J. Gallo Winery in California, the world’s largest wine producer but unknown to VDE-GALLO team, came across the Gallo records site, which was well ranked by search engines. In the name of the Federal Trademark Dilution Act of 1995, which aims to eliminate confusing trademarks, Gallo records, which have been distributed in the United States, particularly in California, for over 20 years, will in future have to be distributed under the name “Gall”.
For sixty years, part of the household’s money, most of its vacation time and many nights off have been devoted to collecting a treasure trove that is worth nothing, but takes up far more space than paintings: in all, the volume of two enormous barns. Alongside new productions, generally of great interest, we need to find the time to tidy up, sort, throw away, recycle, and organize continuity so that, if possible, public access to these moments of history and beauty remains as open as possible, in accordance with the wishes of all the musicians who, for their part, have also contributed to making these achievements possible.
Olivier Buttex, April 2025
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