Such was the pace of recording from Yablonsky that there were times when the session tapes were lost on Naxos shelves! The third disc of Ivanovs’ symphonies (Nos. 8 and 20) and the disc of Arensky’s suites were both originally scheduled for Marco Polo but were released only years later, on Naxos.
‘It was an unforgettable time, particularly those first years. There was so much to do. Economically it was quite difficult – the last years of the Soviet Union – and Naxos didn’t pay very much; but it paid enough for the orchestral musicians to eat. Now the situation is much better.’
With so many recordings, conductor and label owner have been in regular contact, though they have only met a couple of times – once in Paris at the start of the relationship and then at MIDEM some years later. ‘For fifteen years it was “Mr Yablonsky” and “Mr Heymann”, then one night it was “Klaus” and “Dmitry”. And we exchange ideas. He came to me with Shostakovich and with Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky. And I recently suggested some Croatian piano concertos – not something you would think up over breakfast, but I know a very good Croatian pianist, Goran Filipec, and Klaus seems very excited about it.’ Yablonsky is co-artistic director of the Qabala Music Festival in Azerbaijan and professor of cello at the Baku Academy of Music, so he is getting to know the country’s music. ‘There are some fantastic things here that nobody has heard of.’ A CD of Azerbaijani piano concertos – by Amirov and Adigezalov – will appear on Naxos.
Yablonsky lives in the French Pyrenees, on the border with Spain. He has 330 old olive trees and harvests them himself. He calls the place his ‘Catalan dacha’. And he still, occasionally, appears on Naxos as a cellist, in chamber as well as solo music. His recording of Rachmaninov’s piano trios that he made with two friends (Valeri Grohovski, piano and Eduard Wulfson, violin) in England’s Potton Hall studio – a world away from his customary place in the Mosfilm Studio in front of the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra, conducting Lyapunov – shows how much he still enjoys simply playing music.
Michael Halász
As a busy conductor working in the heart of Europe, for more than thirty years in leading opera houses (including a decade as resident conductor of the Vienna State Opera), Michael Halász was able to bring a wealth of experience to Naxos. At the same time, Naxos was able to offer him a substantial recording profile, which otherwise – in a culture dedicated to highly promoted artists singled out as the darlings of the major labels – may not have been open to him. From this association sprang a series of fine recordings on Naxos and Marco Polo of both central repertoire and lesser-known works – performances which would enhance any label at any price, as many of the reviewers agreed. In particular, Halász’s day-to-day work in the opera house brought him into contact with some of the finest up-and-coming singers of the day; his expertise in this area resulted in some truly outstanding recordings of Mozart operas.
Hungarian born, Halász is a large personality – a strong, clear, practical musician who is highly capable in the recording environment. He remembers one week in Budapest with the Failoni Orchestra. ‘Klaus asked me to do Schubert Symphonies Nos. 1–4, No. 6 and the Joachim transcription of the Grand Duo. I had already done Nos. 5 and 8 and the Rosamunde overture. Well, it happens in life that if you prepare something well, sometimes it goes easily. It all went well and I realised that we would have a clear day and a half in the schedule, so I rang Klaus in Hong Kong and said, “What next? Shall we do the Ninth?” He said “Yes!” I didn’t have my score in Budapest, so they brought me a score from the orchestral library. I had done it in concert many times and I had a clear imagination of it, and as we had spent the week playing Schubert it was very easy work!’ At 9 a.m. he picked up his baton, the horn call sounded, and off they went. It turned out to be an excellent recording, idiomatically Viennese, and it is still in the Naxos catalogue fifteen years later. ‘We just played Schubert.When you are in the studio for six or seven hours a day, you don’t think about what an historical moment it is, that you are recording one of the greatest works in the symphonic repertoire. You are just caught up in this glorious music. Now and again I thought about my feet, because I was on my feet for a very long time.’
The association between Halász and Naxos has spanned nearly twenty-five years; the Schubert symphony cycle is one of its highlights, though it began in more obscure territory. Heymann and Halász first met in 1985 in Bratislava when Takako Nishizaki recorded Rubinstein’s Violin Concerto with the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra for Marco Polo. Mutual respect meant a constant stream of subsequent recording commissions. In the following year Halász recorded Goldmark’s Second Symphony and the overture Penthesilea with the Rhenish Philharmonic Orchestra. It was the first of a number of world-premiere recordings that Halász conducted for Marco Polo, the ideas for which, he acknowledges, generally came from Heymann. ‘At that time Klaus was looking for the gaps, for what had not been recorded. I think he was sleeping with the Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, looking for the holes. He drove me almost to insanity to make me do Myaskovsky symphonies. I asked him, “Who wants this stuff?” He said, “The Myaskovsky revival is coming.” I am still waiting for it, but I did the Seventh and Tenth Symphonies anyway.’
Other orchestral repertoire that Halász recorded for Marco Polo includes ballet music from Rubinstein’s operas, Schmidt’s Symphony No. 1 and Notre Dame, and Richard Strauss’s Symphony No. 2; and it was for Marco Polo, not Naxos, that he first brought his operatic expertise into play. Since 1978 he had been general musical director of the Hagen Opera House and, just before leaving to take up the post of resident conductor at the Vienna State Orchestra, he proposed to Heymann Schreker’s Der ferne Klang. It was the most ambitious project yet undertaken by Marco Polo, though just the kind of world premiere that Heymann wanted. It was only possible because Halász had already programmed it at Hagen, so all the rehearsals and preparation had taken place. Quite a coup for the label, it was released in 1991.
‘The tasks Klaus gave me for Marco Polo meant that I learned things I wouldn’t have known. They were worth doing because they were world premieres – though to be honest we didn’t really know how they would turn out. The Goldmark is not the best symphony because it is so programmatic and the Strauss symphony is not a very notable piece because it is not the Strauss we know; but just because it is not Dvoák doesn’t mean that it is unimportant. They were worth doing – though I am still not sure about Myaskovsky!’
By the early 1990s Halász was also busy recording more popular works for Naxos. There was a steady outpouring of repertoire that included ballets by Tchaikovsky (Swan Lake and The Nutcracker), overtures by Beethoven and even Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos. 3 and 6. ‘When Klaus asked me to do the Third I did wonder if I should. There are so many recordings of Beethoven’s “Eroica” – who is waiting for the “Eroica” conducted by Halász? Doing it in a concert is a different thing, but the 150th “Eroica” on record? Then I thought, ok, if the world can take Myaskovsky’s symphonies, they can take Halász’s “Eroica”! I did it, and I think it is a decent thing.’
Other works included Mozart’s C minor Mass and Brahms’s Symphony No. 4; cello concertos by Elgar and Dvoák with Maria Kliegel; and part of the Mahler symphony cycle, shared with Antoni Wit (Halász recorded Nos. 1, 7 and 9, as well as Das Lied von der Erde). Though based in Vienna, Halász remains very respectful of the orchestras with which he worked. ‘The Slovak Philharmonic was an excellent orchestra; it was only because it was in Bratislava that it was not regarded as a leading orchestra, like the London Philharmonic. They could do almost everything. It was just because they were behind the Iron Curtain at this time that they were not so well known in the West.’
His appointment to the Vienna State Opera came at a time when Heymann was ready to risk new digital recordings of opera on a budget label. The margins were tight, but with an opera conductor of Halász’s standing he did not need to worry about the result. Heymann wisely left the choice of singers to Halász. ‘I was
working with good singers all the time, and it was better that I chose them than agents pushed singers on to Klaus.’ The first Mozart opera he recorded for Naxos was The Magic Flute – in the Italian Institute in Budapest with the Failoni Orchestra. The soloists were Herbert Lippert as Tamino, Elizabeth Norberg-Schulz as Pamina, Hellen Kwon as the Queen of the Night, Kurt Rydl as Sarastro, and Georg Tichy, who hit the comic mark with his Papageno. When the recording was released in 1994 Gramophone’s complimentary review began, ‘Naxos has done it again’.
The recording sessions went well, but it could so easily have foundered in the editing studio: ‘I always like to be with the people when they edit, sometimes even in the first edit. It was particularly important to be there for The Magic Flute because there is so much spoken dialogue, and some of the singers did not have very good German. We also had to mix in some sound effects – the magic flute, the thunder and the roaring lion. It was lucky that I was there. I was sitting in the edit studio when we were mixing the thunder before the Queen of the Night’s first entry. The engineer put it together and I listened back, and I felt there was something not quite right. I said to the engineer that the Queen of the Night was suddenly a half-tone higher. He said it was not possible. I said I do not have absolute pitch but it seems to be not only higher but faster. When we checked it we found that the high note of the Queen of the Night was now not F but F sharp. It was a fact! We were totally puzzled. We didn’t know why. The original recording was at the right pitch. So we started to read the manuals to the digital editing system that was being used. The engineer didn’t have very good English, and although I could read the English I wasn’t an engineer and didn’t really understand the technical data! But thinking it through, I came to the solution that the sound-effect sample of the thunder was at 48 kHz and everything else was at 44.1 kHz. By picking up that sound effect and placing it before the Queen of the Night, it took her higher. I said, “Ok, what can we do?” The solution we came to was not in the manuals, but we made it work: we put in one millisecond of digital silence between the thunder and the Queen, and this allowed the Queen of the Night to play at 44.1. I was very proud of that millisecond.’
Beethoven’s Fidelio was recorded in 1998 and Don Giovanni two years later, both in the Phoenix Studio in Budapest with the Nicolaus Esterházy Sinfonia; and he was back there in 2004 for The Marriage of Figaro.
Now in his mid-seventies, Halász looks back at his many years of recording for Naxos with a sense of satisfaction and affection. It was not as overtly glamorous as his work in the opera houses, but it was a sustained thread. ‘I have often underestimated what it has meant to be on the label. I recorded in Bratislava or Budapest, but Klaus was selling Naxos all over the world. I found that a lot of people knew me in parts of the earth that I could never imagine I would be known. I was surprised. I know I can record well because I have a good feeling for tempo and editing, though I don’t like to listen to my recordings now because they remind me of the development I have been through. But some I am proud of: Mahler 9, a lot of the Schubert symphonies, perhaps the Ninth, the Second and Third. As for opera, I think The Magic Flute – all the Mozarts – and Fidelio, too. But I did not do all these recordings for the money, or for my immortality. I love conducting good pieces.’
Jeremy Summerly
Jeremy Summerly, a conductor and lecturer, is head of academic studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London, a broadcaster for BBC Radio, and an editor for Faber Music. He founded the Oxford Camerata choir in 1984 and was conductor of the Schola Cantorum of Oxford from 1990 to 1996. He has conducted music spanning nine centuries on more than forty recordings for Naxos, and has also conducted at the BBC Proms and the Berliner Philharmonie.
Summerly is very precise about his first contact with Naxos. ‘I was woken up the day after celebrating my thirtieth birthday, 28 February 1991, by a man called David Denton. He said, “You may not have heard of the company, Naxos.” But I had, because I had heard the Schumann and Brahms piano quintets, which was a glorious recording. He said he had heard me on Radio 3 (it was on Record Review) reviewing recent Renaissance choral music, and he presumed I had my own choir. I told him I did, the Oxford Camerata, and I sent him recordings of concerts we had done.
‘Shortly after that he rang me again and said, “We are looking for five recordings of Renaissance choral music, more or less as soon as you can do them.” By the summer we were up and running and we did the first five in fifteen months. Our first recording was the collection of Lamentations by White, Tallis, Palestrina, Lassus and de Brito. We recorded it in New College, Oxford, where I had been an undergraduate myself. It was the summer, so I managed to get in there quite easily and it meant that I was recording in a building I knew well with singers I knew well, and I chose the repertoire, which I also knew very well. We followed that pattern and stuck with what we knew. After the Lamentations we recorded Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli, Masses by Byrd, Victoria and Tallis, and some motets. We were within our comfort zone to get out these five recordings as quickly as we did. When an opportunity like that happens, you either move or you don’t!’
However, things were not quite as simple as they sound. Summerly and the Oxford Camerata had to move from recording at New College for practical reasons. ‘We went from New College to Dorchester Abbey then back to New College, then to Hertford College, Oxford, where we ended up doing most of our recordings because it is very quiet – there is no through traffic. That is very important when you are working with small forces – in our case, fifteen a cappella voices. You can’t afford to have any extraneous noise at all. Every time the session has to stop for noise you lose a bit of the magic, by which I also mean your temper. In the end, we built a real relationship with this small chapel. Hertford College wasn’t chosen for its architectural surroundings but it has really intimate acoustics and it became our recording home.
‘I hadn’t really thought what was going to happen after the first five were made. Since we’d started in 1984 we had been going along in a gentle way, doing concerts as and when the opportunities arose; but recording for Naxos forced us to become a proper group. It was fortunate that I had worked as a sound engineer for the BBC between 1982, when I graduated, and 1989, and I had also done some freelance production. So I was completely comfortable in the whole recording environment. Actually, the Lamentations was my second recording because I had made a CD with the Schola Cantorum of Oxford for a small English label. This meant that when I needed a fully fledged choir for Naxos I could turn to the Schola Cantorum, keeping the Oxford Camerata for Renaissance music.’
The Oxford Camerata’s recordings sold remarkably well: Lamentations has topped 100,000 and Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli more than 150,000. They were also widely praised and helped to set the standard not only for Naxos recordings of early music but for the label’s improving musical standards in general. This was especially important because, though the group emanated from England and was drawing on the excellence of the English choral tradition, its repertoire was international.
After those first five recordings, David Denton asked simply, ‘Well, what’s next?’ Summerly suggested Gesualdo’s five-part music, which conveniently fitted onto one disc. ‘It was not music we knew well, and so for the first time we moved slightly out of our comfort zone and into music I hadn’t thought of recording before. But this was an opportunity to broaden our range, and from that moment there seemed few barriers. I didn’t have to plan, because Naxos started to request specific music from us, such as Fauré’s Requiem, which as it happened I was performing with Schola Cantorum. Then came Bach and Vivaldi. It was quite an organic process. It burgeoned in a way I hadn’t expected it to do. Actually, I hadn’t considered myself a specialist in Renaissance music when we started so I was very happy when the brief expanded back to the medieval period and then up to the Baroque and the nineteenth century.’
Being an academic as well as a conductor, Summerly was able to contribute to Naxos i
n other ways. ‘It never occurred to me that there was a restriction in recording for a budget label: we were being paid a professional fee and we were not doing a budget job. But we did feel that what was provided in the booklet with the CDs could be improved by heftier liner notes, texts and translations. When I mentioned this, David simply suggested I send them to him and they would be printed! It was so straightforward! Fortunately, we had a number of people in both choirs who were very reliable in a variety of languages, not least Latin, so we did it all in house and Naxos paid for them. So with this kind of relationship it never occurred to us, though our reputation was growing, that we could do better by going to EMI or Deutsche Grammophon. There would have been so many more constraints on what we could do.’
Summerly began to discuss future projects directly with Heymann, and he recalls that it was Heymann himself who was the prime mover in taking Summerly’s recordings beyond the Renaissance area. They first met when the Oxford Camerata was invited to sing at the company’s tenth-anniversary London concert in 1997. ‘He described us as Naxos five-star artists.’
The music that Summerly was now conducting stretched back in time to Hildegard of Bingen, Machaut and Gombert, and forward to John Tavener. Summerly formed the Oxford Camerata’s own instrumental ensemble for the recording of Fauré’s Requiem but used the Northern Chamber Orchestra for Bach (including the Magnificat) and Vivaldi. He continued to feel that he had artistic freedom. ‘It suited us down to the ground. The wonderful thing about the association with Naxos is the lack of artistic meddling. Klaus said he wanted Fauré’s Requiem, and I said I would like to do the fantastically beautiful original version without violins. His reply was simply that that was our call.’
The Story of Naxos Page 21