Naxos Records is a record label for classical music compact discs and DVDs. Founded in 1987 by Klaus Heymann, a German-born resident of Hong Kong, the label today is one of the biggest classical music labels, and has recently begun distributing DVDs as well. Despite a general decline in classical music sales, Naxos is one of the two largest-selling classical labels in the world.[1] In 2005 Naxos won the ”Label of the Year Award” at Classic FM/Gramophone awards. In 2003 Naxos started a paid subscription service (it had previously been free) offering their complete catalogue (as well as joint labels) for listening on the Internet as the Naxos Music Library.
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Repertoire
The company became quickly known through its budget pricing of many discs, with simpler artwork and design than other labels. Naxos tries to avoid repertoire duplication. Compared to other major record labels, the Naxos selection may be shallower in terms of interpretations of a given masterwork. For example, the present Naxos catalog has only three orchestral recordings of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, with the conductors Bela Drahos, Richard Edlinger and Richard Strauss (the last a historic recording); compared with Deutsche Grammophon, which has Claudio Abbado, Leonard Bernstein, Karl Böhm, Herbert von Karajan, Carlos Kleiber and Christian Thielemann, some whom have recorded the piece on more than one occasion. On the other hand, their selection of classical repertoire is very broad - perhaps the broadest of any existing label - including fringe repertoire such as the Symphonies of Nikolai Myaskovsky, much of contemporary classical music, and pieces by Johann Pachelbel other than his famous Canon in D. Its enterprise is seen in series of little recorded works like Japanese classical music, Jewish-American music, wind band music, film music, early music, and a much lauded series of British string quartets recorded by the Maggini Quartet. Many of these are première recordings. Naxos has also been recording extensively the music of several contemporary composers, including Leonardo Balada, Bechara El-Khoury, Laurent Petitgirard, and Alla Pavlova. In recent years, Naxos has begun to take advantage of the expiring copyright protection of other companies' studio recordings, and remastering (from discs) and releasing those recordings. Notable examples of this activity can be seen in the studio recordings of Maria Callas, and in the release of the 1934 world première performance of Howard Hanson's opera The Merry Mount. However, due to the case Capitol Records, Inc. v. Naxos of America, Inc. (4 N.Y.3d 540, 2nd Cir. 2005), legal restrictions prevent many of these recordings being sold in the United States. Naxos has recorded primarily European symphony orchestra, often with lesser-known conductors. Nevertheless, reviews of selected CDs have found generally first class performances and first class recording standards . The label has often released comprehensive collections of some composers:[2]
- Complete orchestral music of
- William Alwyn
- Alexander Glazunov
- Witold Lutosławski
- Joaquín Rodrigo
- Arnold Schoenberg (conducted by eminent scholar Robert Craft)
- Igor Stravinsky (conducted by eminent scholar Robert Craft)
- Anton Webern (conducted by eminent scholar Robert Craft)
- Complete symphonies of
- Complete piano music of
- Complete lieder of Franz Schubert
In recent years the label has branched out into spoken-word audiobooks, Super Audio CDs and DVD-Audio, jazz, and world music.
Imprints
- Amadis - "super-budget" label
- Arthaus DVD
- Marco Polo - "The Label of Discovery"
- Naxos Educational
- Naxos Historical - digitally remastered recordings of classical music of the past
- Naxos Jazz Legends - music of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Goodman, Django Reinhardt, etc.
- Naxos Nostalgia
- Naxos World
References
- ^ Michael Dougan. "Classical Music: Tuning up for the 21st century" (html), San Francisco Chronicle, 15 July 2002.
- ^ Review by Robert E. Nylund
