In late 1992, Jack Pfeiffer sat for an extensive interview with Audio Magazine's Susan Elliott. We present it here in its entirety.

He is the prince of the RCA vaults, currently "re-awakening all the sleeping beauties...," many of which he also created. Jack Pfeiffer (John F., formerly), a 43-year veteran of RCA, now BMG, has produced the original recordings of many of classical music's most revered performers, including Artur Rubinstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Jascha Heifetz, Van Cliburn, Leontyne Price and Arturo Toscanini. He now is overseeing the reissue of these treasures onto CD.

Pfeiffer arrived at RCA in 1949 fresh out of the University of Arizona. From 78s through tape, microgroove, Dynagroove, stereo, quad, and digital, he's seen - and in some cases helped create - it all.
You've worked with all the greats, Jack. How does it feel?

I can't tell you how proud I feel about that. Just to be able to remember sitting in a control room while Jascha Heifetz played the violin into a microphone - and then recalling that he actually asked me what I thought! How ridiculous! To have had the feeling that all these great artists - Heifetz, Rubinstein, Stokowski, Reiner, Horowitz, Landowska, Leontyne, Placido - would profit from my opinion is really just unbelievable to me.

How do you see your role as a producer?

I'm an audience, a receptacle. Artists want a reaction. Not that they always consider it valid.

You're too modest. There must be a reason these people kept coming back to you, besides you being a warm person with a lot of patience.

I think that's the whole thing. Somehow I always managed to give the artists the feeling that I was on their side, that I was doing everything I could to help them do what they did best. As a result, they gave me friendship. Some developed into very close friends.

Who?

Heifetz, Horowitz. Wanda Landowska was probably the first. Certainly Van [Cliburn] has been an enormous friend.

Watching you in the studio, I see your approach as laid-back, low-key - very different from, say, Tom Frost's. He's very hands-on and even functions as a music director.

I always felt the artist knew pretty much what he wanted to do, and it was my job to translate that onto a phonograph record - not to tell them how or what to do. Of course, a lot depends on the level of the artist. To some I've had to say, "Sorry, that doesn't make it," but only when I felt they weren't sure of what they were doing. I always found the better the artist, the easier he or she is to work with.

After 43 years with RCA, what has been the best decade for you?

The first, because of the wide-eyed, just unbelievable excitement and enthusiasm and newness. To be suddenly in close proximity with all these people I had admired from a distance - I can't think of anything I could've done that I would have enjoyed so much.

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