The Story of Naxos

by Nicolas Soames

  There were also two American labels, RCA and CBS. RCA was created out of the merger in the late 1920s of the mighty Victor Company and the Radio Corporation of America, and was led for decades by a titan of American capitalism, David Sarnoff. One of the key RCA artists was Arturo Toscanini. CBS (originally Columbia) was led by another mid-twentieth-century media giant, William Paley, who created strong competition for RCA’s record division with the purchase of the American Record Corporation in 1938. Both RCA and CBS used their radio and television arms to promote their key artists, who included Sir Thomas Beecham.

  The content of these six catalogues stretched back to the start of the recording era in the first decade of the twentieth century. There were remarkable archives from those early years when the race was on to capture forever the finest performers and performances of the day. And these had to be good: editing did not become commonplace until after the Second World War (when tape was used as a recording medium).

  By 1977 the six international majors commanded the lion’s share of both classical music record sales and the publicity and reviews in classical magazines all over the world. They had well-developed machines to promote their stars; and they could exploit the back catalogue with mid-price releases, popular compilations, and specially priced boxed sets for the Christmas market.

  Living alongside these magnificent whales were the ‘independents’ – classical labels that had often been created by enthusiasts hoping to fill a variety of specialist niches. The ‘indies’ were ever enterprising and they truly filled the needs of the collectors. They offered rare repertoire, which more often than not was chamber music but did include orchestral works and even opera in certain circumstances. These independents lived on their wits, surviving frequently through the energies and imagination of the founder; they reflected the nation of their headquarters, promoting, at least initially, the music or musicians of that country; and generally they declined as age and exhaustion crept up on the owner.

  It was a busy scene. In the mid-1970s there were CRD, Unicorn-Kanchana, Nimbus, Meridian and Lyrita, among others, in the UK; the two sizeable labels Harmonia Mundi and Erato led the indies in France, as did Acanta and Deutsche Harmonia Mundi in Germany. There was BIS in Scandinavia; and Elektra Nonesuch, Varèse Sarabande and Telarc featured strongly in the US. In the Eastern European Communist Bloc countries, the classical record scene was dominated by the national labels: Supraphon and Opus in Czechoslovakia, Hungaroton in Hungary, Polskie Nagrania in Poland, VEB Deutsche Schallplatten in East Germany, and the mighty Melodiya in the Soviet Union. These had a double-sided status: majors in their own countries, independents in the rest of the world.

  The perception was that the six majors were firmly at the top of the pile, with their maestri. Unassailable king of all was Herbert von Karajan. He was the prize of two companies – DG and EMI – simply because his gargantuan appetite for recording and the costs involved were both too great for one, even a major. There were other star conductors, of course: Georg Solti with Decca, Leonard Bernstein with CBS, the late Otto Klemperer with EMI, the young James Levine with RCA, and Bernard Haitink with Philips. They all had their symphonic cycles, though none matched the prolific Karajan, who recorded no fewer than five Beethoven symphony cycles during the course of his recording career. Comparing the merits of Bernstein’s Mahler versus Haitink’s, for example, was a central discussion of the day, and to be classed as an average collector one had to have at least three or four versions of the complete cycle.

  Then there were the soloists. Take the pianists: Ashkenazy on Decca, Pollini on DG, Perahia on CBS; or the violinists: Menuhin on EMI, Stern on CBS; or the singers: Pavarotti and Sutherland on Decca, Sherrill Milnes and Placido Domingo on RCA. This was just the surface. Most of the majors had a rich roster of contracted artists covering the principal instruments and offered different performances of the same works. Of course they covered the central repertoire (which, during the 1980s, became known by the phrase ‘core repertoire’) but the promotional effort focused on the artists. The majors both created stars and built on the success of established concert performers. It was the purpose of the press and marketing departments to relay the message to the collectors that for serious interpretations of core repertoire it was necessary to invest in full-price recordings by these top artists with the world’s top ten orchestras. To invest in anything else would be to support a bold attempt, perhaps, but it would not bring the finest quality.

  This sense of grandeur was backed by a financial base that did not merely allow excess but encouraged it. Artists were given royalty deals and other rewards which matched the pampering of pop stars. They had the right to veto recordings if they disliked the end result – no matter how many days had been spent in the studio. Carlos Kleiber refused to record again for DG after the label insisted on releasing his recording of Tristan und Isolde. He spent days recording it, DG spent months editing it, but he did not think the final edit was good enough to release and refused to pass it. In the end, DG, in an unusual show of determination, managed to persuade him; it was released (and received well) but Kleiber never did record for the company again.

  Many signed artists also had approval rights on photographs. It was almost commonplace for a release to be delayed for months, even years, because an artist disliked the cover picture and had no time to go into a photographic studio for more sessions. Flying a photographer halfway round the world to take a picture of a singer in full operatic regalia for the front cover was a relatively small outlay.

  This was all matched by lavish promotional budgets, which took classical music writers worldwide to interview, listen and comment on concerts, festivals and recordings. These budgets allowed equally generous funds for advertising in classical music magazines and classical music sections in newspapers, thereby ensuring that the majors had the lion’s share of editorial column inches, with the indies jockeying below for what was left.

  That was just how it was, and few complained. In its way it was a golden time, and the danger of producing inflated reputations was just part of the party. It was all possible because, from the 1950s and the growth of pop music, and the expansion of record-buying as a popular commercial habit, classical music had carved for itself a special, elevated place in the record industry. It was Art, with a capital A, and the musicians were Artists, with an even larger A. It was not expected that this area of cultural life should make a profit, or contribute to the bottom line of a company, any more than the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden did; or, at least, there was a lot of leeway. The classical departments of these majors lived in a magical world.

  There is no doubt that this aura was only partially earned and deserved, burnished as it was by the powerful marketing machines of the international companies; yet out of this period came extraordinary recordings that will always be regarded as among the unique achievements of Western culture. Few who saw Karajan conduct or who met him could deny that here was an extraordinary man in any terms – similarly Bernstein or Kleiber, Klemperer or Giulini. It wasn’t just about the big stars, either. There was a substratum of highly knowledgeable and dedicated engineers, producers and A&R (artists and repertoire) experts who made this world live. They inhabited an arena that combined aspects of the protective realm of academia, the star quality of showbiz, the rarefied air of an R&D department, and the profligacy of Hollywood.

  There was genuine integrity, too. Often there was a quality of the crusader in some of the projects: Decca, for example, took up the mantle of promoting period performance – a trend that had been started by the independents – and, with its Mozart symphony cycle by Christopher Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music, brought the genre into the mainstream. This was initiated not by the artists but by the head of marketing at Decca: it was an event that actually helped to broaden the period-music movement.

  Another example, again from Decca, was the release of Bach’s complete organ music. For this the company chose an English organist, Peter Hurfo
rd, who was a respected figure though not well known outside organ circles; and it took the imaginative decision to record around the world on only new organs. So Hurford and the Decca recording team travelled throughout Europe, America and Australia to realise the project. It wasn’t cheap. It is unlikely they recouped the investment. But it was certainly a statement.

  For two or three decades, classical recording lived in the supercharged, protected world of the majors, with enough crumbs and space left over for individuals of enterprise to start small labels of their own. The classical share of the record industry varied from 5 per cent in the US, rising to 11 per cent in Germany, with around 7 per cent in the UK; but it remained fairly stable, only shifting now and again following an unexpected crossover blockbuster.

  In the 1970s the classical picture was changing. The pop label Warner dipped its toe in the classical waters by absorbing the independent label Elektra Nonesuch. EMI was investing in local recording centres around the world, giving it a unique character of its own among the majors. In 1979 Deutsche Grammophon and Philips, which comprised the classical labels of the huge record company PolyGram, were joined by Decca. Edward Lewis, the Decca founder and a dedicated classical music lover, had run into financial trouble and needed to sell. He died two weeks later. Although ostensibly the three labels maintained their separate identities, PolyGram Classics, the group’s new title, was now the single most powerful worldwide classical force. Pop companies with their commercial attitudes were beginning to take note of the classical backwaters (though without any real understanding – which may have been why, when Decca was absorbed into PolyGram, all its precious 78 rpm metal masters were destroyed).

  In 1979 LP record sales began to plateau. There were a number of reasons for this. LPs had been around for nearly forty years, and perhaps people were beginning to question whether, when they already had perfectly adequate recordings of Beethoven’s symphonies on LP, it was really necessary to add to them or replace them with a set by the latest conductor. They may have been slightly scratched, but they were much more durable than 78s. The main cause, however, was the advent of home taping. It was in the late 1970s that ‘music centres’ – which combined a radio, an LP record player and a cassette deck – began to make their way over from Japan, and home taping became common practice. Blank cassettes were relatively expensive but it was still cheaper to copy than to buy a new LP. The recording industry launched its first anti-piracy campaign, with a skull-and-crossbones as the logo, but nothing could stem the tide. So the industry began to look for a medium that could not be copied.

  It was also in 1979 that the first commercial digital recordings were made. This system used PCM (pulse code modulation) recorders, which could produce a sound without any analogue ‘hiss’. Classical LPs began to appear with ‘DIGITAL’ as a selling point, offering, it was claimed, absolutely silent background; and it was true, except that there was an analogue ‘moment’ at the microphone end, and when the needle hit the vinyl an analogue process was involved. Nevertheless it did make a discernible difference, and the classical world jumped on this as a major step forward in the engineering of recordings.

  The Philips videodisc introduced digital technology to the home in 1978, and after the engineers of Philips and Sony came together the compact disc was born. Manufacturing CDs was complex and involved a huge investment. Nevertheless, following their initial release in Japan in 1982 and the rest of the world in 1983, CDs transformed the record world. All the record companies hoped that this remarkable fidelity would set such a standard that no one would want to copy onto cassette. In any case, until CD and cassette players were combined in one machine it was quite complex to do; and it was some years before the advent of home computers made copying from CD to CD relatively easy. So, for some time, the industry was convinced that CD would be the answer to home piracy. Ironically digital recording and the CD were to create the greatest home-piracy headache of all for the record companies; but in 1983 they were the perfect solution. They also ushered in a gravy train the like of which classical recording had never seen.

  Initially there were some questions over the nature of the CD sound. Collectors, accustomed to the perceived ‘warm’ sound quality of the LP, did have some criticisms of the first-generation discs and players. However, the technology improved over the years – computers transformed techniques of recording and production as the playback equipment itself evolved – and there was no doubt that the convenience of the medium and the excitement of the new ‘modern’ technology meant that it carried all before it. The playing length was determined, curiously, by Herbert von Karajan. Sony asked him what the length should be and he replied that it should be enough to contain Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. This was quite illogical: it would have made more sense to set it at around sixty minutes (two sides of an LP) or ninety minutes (two sides of a cassette tape).

  The format provided a bona fide reason for the hardcore classical collector to go out and buy again all his favourite recordings on CD: the back catalogues of Karajan, Klemperer, Solti, Giulini; of Michelangeli, Stern; of opera and even historical performances going back into the early years of recording. It was a little while before the record companies really began to exploit the back catalogue – but when they did, it proved very profitable. The new medium also opened the door for a much wider public to sample classical music. While people were buying their Pink Floyd and The Beatles on CD they would throw a classical CD into their basket. It looked good on the shelves, and a full orchestra did sound impressive on CD.

  The only issue for the first four or five years was that the CDs were very expensive (their silver appearance was designed to endorse this). There was restricted manufacturing capacity at the few CD plants around the world. Record companies could demand high prices from the consumer for the privilege of owning this technology and sold CDs for three times the price of LPs. There was a clear indication that classical music was in the vanguard of the CD movement, even though the discs were not cheap. This was primarily because the longer playing times more obviously benefitted classical music than pop; but it had also clearly been deemed that the higher spending power of the classical collectors, and their interest in hi-fi – they did not play their LPs on a multi-changer Dansette – would make them early adopters. The assumption proved correct.

  The commercial success of the CD’s early years meant that classical record companies began to show their heads above the record-industry parapet. This could be seen by the growth of the classical presence at MIDEM (the annual record-industry trade fair held in Cannes each January), which led to the establishment of MIDEM Classique. It gave an energy to the industry in general and classical music in particular. New technology was helping to make classical music a bit fashionable.

  At the same time, the general public’s perception of classical musicians was on the rise. Karajan may have been in the last years of his life, but his profile was high. For some time his concerts in Japan with the Berlin Philharmonic were not only packing out concert halls but were being relayed on NHK radio and television, reaching audiences of fifteen million. He realised the importance of connecting with the wider public and began to have all his concerts filmed: it was a massive investment in terms of cost but it would provide him, he hoped, with a kind of immortality. All this attention had a remarkable effect on record sales, and by the time of Karajan’s death in 1989 he represented 25 per cent of all DG’s sales.

  There was a fresh energy in classical recording. This was created partly by the advent of the CD, but also by the flowering of a new generation of independent labels. In the UK, Hyperion, Chandos, Nimbus, ASV and others began to make a significant artistic and sales impact. In Germany, ECM, under its highly individualistic founder Manfred Eicher, was developing a cult following, while Capriccio emerged as the CD was launched. BIS, founded by Robert von Bahr in 1973, had already established itself as the leading independent in Sweden and grasped the opportunity of the CD with both hands.

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nbsp; From Hong Kong, in 1982, came another initiative: Marco Polo Records, founded by the German-born businessman Klaus Heymann to record and release world-premiere recordings of music from the Romantic and late Romantic periods. It was a clear marketing strategy which sat well beside the other independent labels so far established. It was not normal for such an initiative to originate in Hong Kong, but the world was becoming smaller. The first recordings came out on LP; and even though the CD was introduced soon after the formation of the company, the lack of manufacturing capacity meant that it was some time before Heymann could get Marco Polo accepted for pressing by a CD plant.

  Together these small but bold labels began to be a force of their own, changing the face of classical recording and playing their part in raising its profile. On the whole, the driving force was the music rather than the artists; and the growth of the CD helped enormously as, month by month, increased production meant a wider and more varied representation of music and labels on the shelves.

  During the mid-1980s CD manufacturing plants began to proliferate. The CD as a medium was clearly here to stay, and the general financial investment sector had decided to put money in. To begin with, the manufacturing prices were high as the piper called the tune. By 1985 they were starting to drop as competition among plants and greater capacity steadied the market. By 1987 there was even some spare capacity – enough for one Japanese manufacturer to agree to press CDs for $3 each (compared with $1 for an LP).

  It was at this point that a new era in classical recording was about to begin, in the unlikely surroundings of French hypermarkets. A Hong Kong buying office, Fargo, had placed an extremely large order with a Hong Kong company for digital recordings of popular classics to be sold at budget price. The first Naxos CDs rolled off the Denon presses in Yokohama.