Kraft’s life had suddenly changed. He had a busy concert career but he needed to create some space, so he started by reducing his teaching. He recorded the popular guitar concertos by Rodrigo, Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Villa-Lobos in Manchester with the Northern Chamber Orchestra under Nicholas Ward; the recording was released in May 1994 and went on to sell more than 250,000 copies. It was followed later that year by 19th Century Guitar Favourites, which carried the series title ‘Guitar Collection’ and set the pattern for the future.
Then there was a gear shift. Unlike most performing musicians Kraft had always been interested in the recording process; following a discussion with Heymann, it was decided that he try out recording in Canada under his own auspices, with his wife, Bonnie (a pianist and harpsichordist), as producer and editor. After an extensive search the Krafts found St John Chrysostom, a church in Newmarket, just outside Toronto: they felt it had the perfect acoustic for guitar recordings. The first trial recording was passed by the Naxos team and the life of the Krafts set off in another new direction. With many recordings on the books, they even moved home to be closer to the studio environment.
It became apparent to Norbert Kraft that one guitarist could not satisfactorily do all the recording that Naxos wanted in so short a time. In any case, he wanted to build a representative guitar catalogue and this meant drawing on the talents of other players. He first of all had to persuade Heymann to change some established Naxos patterns. ‘Klaus saw Naxos as a repertoire label not an artist-dominated label, without the artist’s photograph on the cover. He also wanted one-composer discs. But this approach is not always appropriate for a guitar catalogue. There are composers who can fill discs – we do have Sor, whose music extends to sixteen CDs, and others – but composers such as Britten or Ginastera, with just one major work, are more common. We also wanted to do themed discs, such as Guitar Music of Argentina.’ In addition, there was quite an abundant repertoire for the guitar as a chamber music instrument. Heymann accepted the differences and the ‘Guitar Collection’ went from strength to strength.
Kraft felt that he himself could comfortably record two or three recital discs per year. In the end, his interest in recording and producing took over, and to date he has made just a dozen recital discs. Norbert and Bonnie Kraft rapidly became the Naxos recording team for Canada and began to attract musicians from North America and much further afield. Initially the focus was on the guitar, though this was not without its tensions. Some of Norbert’s contemporaries were not entirely comfortable with a colleague on the other side of the glass giving them notes about performance or making suggestions. ‘There were times when we felt it was better that I set up the microphones, leave, and let Bonnie take over the production,’ smiles Kraft. But as a new generation of guitarists emerged, the younger players were happy to draw on his expertise. ‘During a recording we act like musical coaches. Of course people bring their own interpretations, but we can help. If we hear that an intended crescendo is not working, that it just isn’t coming to the microphone, I can suggest certain things. So we work very closely with the artist. Of course, we are traffic cops for bad notes or intonation, but we are also intimately involved in helping the players to create their best possible performance.’
Although the Krafts’ production work for Naxos has expanded to take in chamber, orchestral and even choral music, so that they have become the main Naxos recording team in North America, they remain dedicated to building the ‘Guitar Collection’. Over the years, they developed close links with the major international guitar competitions, starting with the Guitar Foundation of America. ‘The guitar is an instrument that lives slightly outside the limelight of the classical world. It has created its own integral, thriving world with its own organisations and societies.’The combination of the Krafts’ specialist guitar knowledge and the world distribution of Naxos was able to produce discs to accompany competition winners as they toured the international concert circuit. These young guitarists launched the Naxos ‘Laureate Series’, which later extended to other instruments. It meant that everyone in the chain of Naxos production had to work at top speed. ‘Often the winners wouldn’t get to our studio until four to six months after the competition, and we had to record, edit and get the disc manufactured and distributed in time for the forthcoming concert tours.’ The Krafts and Naxos now maintain links with three other major international guitar competitions (two in Spain and one in Italy) in addition to the GFA. Each competition offers a Naxos recording as part of the top prize.
In 2003 Norbert Kraft made his final appearance on a Naxos disc, playing in the collection of chamber music by Takemitsu. Although he still gives concerts and teaches, he is principally committed to the recording process. ‘There is still a lot of guitar repertoire to be recorded – we haven’t completed the music of Napoléon Coste or Rodrigo, and we haven’t even touched Leo Brouwer’s concertos.’ The Krafts now record around eight CDs of plucked strings per year: four ‘Laureate’ recordings and four others that also include lute. Nigel North’s CDs have proved among the most popular, and his short video extracts posted on YouTube by the Krafts are accessed by thousands. The breadth of guitar repertoire encompassed is unrivalled, from the quintets of Boccherini to the music of Henze, via Barrios Mangoré and Piazzolla. The ‘Guitar Collection’ is a guitarist’s dream.
Ulrich Eisenlohr – Piano
The Deutsche Schubert-Lied-Edition, encompassing some 650 songs, is one of the greatest musical collections. One masterpiece follows another using only the simplest of means: voice and piano. It was a project very close to Klaus Heymann’s heart, not least because the vast majority were settings of poems written in his mother tongue. He had always found it difficult to listen to these works sung by even the finest singers if they were not native German speakers. After all, he felt, these songs were Schubert’s passionate response to the very sound of German poetry as well as its meaning, and he determined that Naxos’s complete set would represent the language faithfully.
The distinguished accompanist Ulrich Eisenlohr joined the baritone Roman Trekel for Volume 1 of the Schubert-Lied-Edition with Winterreise, Schubert’s most remarkable song cycle. It was recorded in Berlin in 1998 and released in 1999. Just over a decade later, in March 2010, Volume 35 – the final volume, entitled ‘Rarities, Fragments and Alternative Versions’ – was released.
It was quite a journey for Eisenlohr. An academic as well as a pianist, he had taught at conservatories in Europe and Japan; he knew most of the songs and had played many in concert. But spending a decade so intensely involved in the wellspring of Schubert’s fertile imagination proved both invigorating and exhausting. The pianist Stefan Laux was there at the beginning of the series, but soon the Edition came under Eisenlohr’s sole guidance. Not only did he choose the singers and accompany them; he also wrote many of the detailed notes, researching the background and content of songs and fragments. This scholarly work underpinned the series and enabled Eisenlohr to produce the most comprehensive set ever recorded.
‘We have 672 tracks. This includes many different settings [new compositions based on the same poem] as well as some different versions [modifications of the same composition] and also some fragments and part songs.’ As Eisenlohr explains, his decision to organise the collection by the poets was to follow Schubert’s own approach. ‘Sorting the songs by poets and poet groups brings numerous advantages,’ he says. ‘First of all, Schubert himself followed this concept in significant parts of his lieder composing career. Secondly, it becomes evident that Schubert was a master in assimilating the styles and characters of poets and their lyrics. You will find specific approaches in sound, musical speech and construction for every important poet or poet group. Finally, grouping by poets shows evidently that poem and music, as well as poet and composer, come to an indissoluble symbiosis in the genre of classical art song.’
Perhaps the most challenging part of the project was the choice of the singers. The decision to match tenor or
baritone to a set of songs could only be a personal response to the works themselves, but central to that selection was Eisenlohr’s performing experience over the years. ‘Knowing, hearing, working with the singers was the most important part. It was a question of choosing musicians who were not only good singers, but good lieder singers. And native German speaking. This may not be a “must” for Schubert lieder singing, but we have found it to be very beneficial.’
Eisenlohr used the authoritative Bärenreiter Neue Schubert-Ausgabe. Although no formal academic research was necessary, he worked closely with the singers on the text before going into the studio. ‘We had to look with fresh eyes at many aspects of performance. Take “Poets of Sensibility”, Vol. 6 with Jan Kobow: we wanted to really work out musical variations for different strophes. Maybe this comes quite close to the way Schubert and his singers performed these songs.’
The Deutsche Schubert-Lied-Edition was a project that Eisenlohr will never forget: it has enriched his own concert life and he hopes that it will lead listeners to discoveries. ‘We found that there are lots of songs of the highest quality and beauty which are almost unknown and rarely appear in lied recital programmes.’
The New Generation
Tianwa Yang – Violin
The young Chinese violinist Tianwa Yang made her mark on Naxos with fresh and lively recordings of the violin music by Sarasate, starting in 2004; there are six volumes to date. Virtuosity is a hallmark. A child prodigy, she recorded Paganini’s Twenty-Four Caprices at the age of thirteen; but she has since matured into a violinist with an international solo career taking her throughout the US and Europe. She also made a recording of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons (an important promotional landmark for a young musician) but lifted the character of the disc by coupling it with The Four Seasons of Piazzolla. Current projects for Naxos include the complete music for violin and piano by the German composer Wolfgang Rihm and Ysaÿe’s solo sonatas.
Yang studied in China until the age of sixteen before spending three years in Germany. Among her stated influences are Jörg-Wolfgang Jahn of the Bartholdy Quartet and the Baroque cellist Anner Bylsma; yet, as seen in her Sarasate recordings, grace, lightness of touch and freedom in performance are very much part of her own style.
It was Heymann who suggested that she begin her Naxos recording career with Sarasate. ‘That’s how it all began. He asked me to programme the most popular works but also other favourites, perhaps of my own, and he left me to choose that. I didn’t at that time know the rest of Sarasate very well at all. I just knew a couple of pieces. Even for the first record I chose one thing that I didn’t know beforehand. Sarasate’s best is very good. I like all of his opera fantasies, which certainly deserve to be better known – especially the Carmen, Magic Flute and Don Giovanni fantasies, and Romeo and Juliet. So many of these are never played in public, which I think is a shame. And of course the violin writing is wonderful. His work shows – how can I put it? – the lightest and most elegant aspects of the violin: it’s so often so delicate, so very fine and detailed and sensitive. And of course, being a great violinist, he had a wonderful knowledge of how to make the instrument sound best.’
Ashley Wass – Piano
Competitions are derided by most musicians yet they often provide launch pads for soloists. This was certainly true for the English pianist Ashley Wass. Part of his reward for winning the UK-based World Piano Competition in 1997 was a recording for Naxos, which set him, albeit slightly circuitously, on the road to a fruitful recording career – fruitful both for himself and for English music.
After the competition Naxos sent him a long list of works that were needed for the catalogue, from which he was invited to choose repertoire to record. He went for a selection of works by César Franck, a characteristically idiosyncratic choice for a first recording. It is principally with English music of the early twentieth century that he has made his mark on the label, though he is the first to admit that recording the repertoire has been a journey of discovery as much for him as for many collectors – especially the music of Arnold Bax.
‘I didn’t know anything about Bax at the start. There seemed to be a revival of interest in his music at the beginning of this century, led by recordings of the symphonies on Naxos conducted mainly by David Lloyd-Jones. I got to know the music a little bit through those CDs and it began to appeal to me. I did the first disc [Piano Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2] and it was well received and we went on from there.’ There was a gap of some seven years from winning the competition to the release of the first volume of Bax in 2004, but then things moved more quickly. Wass recorded a further eight volumes, encompassing all of Bax’s solo, orchestral and chamber music with piano; he was the first to do it. ‘I think the Symphonic Variations is a masterpiece – wonderful – and it was fabulous fun to record. The First Sonata has regularly found its way into my concert programmes over the past three or four years, and has always been well received. And the big forty-five-minute Winter Legends, a proper monster of a work, is also very remarkable. It’s a fine piece – quite dark at times, typically Baxian in its rather wandering structure and its elusive melodies; one thing Bax could really do was write music which is immensely beautiful.’
The Bax cycle and the other recordings of English music meant that Wass had to learn many works extremely quickly, but this is one of his particular skills. Not all the music is of top quality, he concedes, but it meant that he got to know some outstanding works which will always remain in his repertoire. Of the English composers he has recorded for Naxos he reserves his highest praise for Frank Bridge, whose music ‘I just fell in love with … Of all the projects I’ve undertaken, the Bridge recordings have been by far the most rewarding for me. At his best he’s a truly extraordinary composer. The Sonata, for instance, is an absolutely wonderful piece though unfortunately it remains much less well known than many lesser works by more famous composers.’
He was concerned that by recording so much English music he would become typecast as an ‘English specialist’ but he acknowledges that he has benefitted from this Naxos profile. He was the obvious choice to play Vaughan Williams’s Piano Concerto in the BBC Proms in 2008, and he went on to record it for Naxos with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by James Judd. He is frequently asked to include an English piece when giving recitals abroad. Yet he was especially pleased to record two volumes of Liszt as part of the ‘Liszt Complete Piano Music’ project. In 2005 he played at a celebratory concert for Naxos’s eighteenth birthday, a private event in London. It was a memorable occasion, for not only was this performance given in the middle of the party – not a formal concert event at all – but it was also being filmed, and the cameraman took advantage of the informality to get in extremely close. Standing only a few feet away on his other side was Klaus Heymann himself, interested to see this English pianist in performance, having only heard him on disc. Despite the pressure, Wass gave a superb virtuosic performance of some challenging Liszt pieces and was invited shortly afterwards to record for the Liszt edition. The first CD was, at his suggestion, the transcription for two pianos of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 (recorded with Leon McCawley); the second was the Album d’un voyageur, the first incarnation of Book I of the famous Années de pèlerinage, which Wass had played many times in concert.
He also has a particular commitment to chamber music – he runs his own festival in Lincolnshire – and Naxos has given him the opportunity to record Bridge’s piano trios and, with the Tippett Quartet (another Naxos ensemble), piano quintets by Bax.
Wass is dedicated not to making a career but to making music, and a couple of years ago, though just thirty-three, he took a four-month sabbatical from the piano and recording. ‘The danger is that you get burnt out and tired, and it all starts to feel like a job rather than a passion. You need to remind yourself every now and then why you have chosen to do this; and when you are running around stressed and tired and worried, and feeling that you can’t really manage it, I think
you need to take a step back.’ When he does step back, his discography alone – which also includes music by Elgar and Alwyn – can keep him in the public eye.
Eldar Nebolsin – Piano
The Uzbek-born pianist Eldar Nebolsin has undertaken particularly challenging assignments for Naxos, recording anew some of the music written by pianists for pianists, such as the concertos by Liszt and Chopin, and Rachmaninov’s preludes, as well as Schubert’s Wanderer-Fantasie. Equally active as a chamber musician in the concert hall, his first chamber recording for Naxos features Brahms’s piano quartets. Most recently he was in the studio with the two piano concertos by the twentieth-century Portuguese composer Fernando Lopes-Graça, which indicates his breadth of interest.
A relaxed and personable man, he takes an easy view of his career path, studded inevitably as it is by competitions. ‘I only took part in four competitions and I think it was far too much. In all of them I was lucky to get first prizes, and I always wondered why it happened …’ These included the Santander and Moscow competitions, where in both he won not only the top prize but also the Mozart Piano Concerto prize (which says more about his sensibilities than his luck).
The concertos by Chopin and Liszt are core ingredients in the catalogue of any record label, and with these Nebolsin follows in the Naxos footsteps of Idil Biret and Jen Jandó, who set the benchmark in the early years. ‘One of the most popular composers, Chopin will always remain, in my opinion, one of the most demanding. He is like a touchstone or like litmus paper: even a few bars of his music immediately reveal what material you are made of as a performer. Something similar happens in Mozart’s music. It’s impossible to lie when playing Chopin. His music makes you tell the truth, so to speak. In every sentence of Chopin’s music there could be a different soul gesture. It is very important to understand how the harmonies are interrelated and what they mean in each case. By contrast, Liszt demands a kind of “orchestral” imagination, so the pianist’s goal is to learn to hear an extra-pianistic dimension in order to convince listeners that Liszt’s fast and difficult passages go far beyond simple typewriting-machine noise, which sadly happens too often. His virtuosity is primarily a means to an end, not merely an end in itself. That’s what I think is meant by the “transcendental” character of his writing for piano: it opens the way to a sublime realm of music.’
The Story of Naxos Page 18