Naxos Records

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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”[citation needed] 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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[edit] 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[citation needed] - 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.

In the eighties, Naxos has recorded primarily central/eastern European symphony orchestras, often with lesser-known conductors to minimize recording costs and hence maintain its budget prices. However, since the nineties, Naxos has started recording with British and American orchestras (e.g. Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and Seattle Symphony Orchestra). Reviews of Naxos CDs have found generally first class performances and first class recording standards, significantly contributing to the success of the company.

The label has often released comprehensive collections of some composers:

In recent years the label has branched out into spoken-word audiobooks, Super Audio CDs and DVD-Audio, jazz, and world music.

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[edit] References

  1. ^ Michael Dougan. "Classical Music: Tuning up for the 21st century" (html), San Francisco Chronicle, 15 July 2002. 

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