Of the many recordings that Summerly has now made for Naxos he highlights two in particular. ‘Perhaps the most special for me was Purcell’s Anthems with the Music on the Death of Queen Mary. It is English music and we are a quintessentially English choir. In the recording sessions I remember we didn’t want to move on. We would get to the end of a piece and the producer would say, ‘Let’s move on,’ and we really didn’t want to. We wanted to do it just once more … we almost couldn’t bear to say it was a wrap on any one track.’ Especially memorable too was the recording of Spem in Alium, Tallis’s forty-part motet, a unique jewel of Renaissance choral repertoire. ‘We recorded Spem in Alium for the twentieth anniversary of the Oxford Camerata in 2004. The producer was Andrew Walton and the engineer was Mike Clements. Of course we needed forty voices. In these early music groups, singers have a very useful window of about a decade before their voices mature and they start to become soloists, and so the makeup of the choir constantly changes. With Spem we were able to get people back and have a wonderful time. But I will also never forget it because we recorded the piece in the round, which I had never done before. I remember standing in the middle of the huge circle in the large nave of All Hallows, Gospel Oak, doing this wonderful piece. Wherever I looked in this huge circle of forty singers I could see a really good friend. It was both a most extraordinary musical and a most extraordinary emotional experience for me. Even now, I can’t listen to it because it moves me too much. I know each one of those forty voices, and I was slap bang in the middle of it. It was unforgettable.’
Summerly has recorded for Naxos for over twenty years: what started as performance in the highly specialist area of Renaissance music expanded beyond all expectations. He has conducted Tavener’s Lament for Jerusalem, The Christmas Story by Schütz, Portuguese Masses by Lobo and Cardoso, and Handel’s Coronation Anthems (including Zadok the Priest). He even recorded a wordless version of thirty seconds of the Agnus Dei from Fauré’s Requiem for a car advertisement on television (the producers were going to use the Naxos recording but decided it was not appropriate to use sacred words, so the choir was recorded afresh without them). As a teacher at the Royal Academy he could identify gaps in the catalogue of available choral music recordings, and he found Heymann receptive when he explained the need for a good recording of music by Machaut, for example.
Easter Week of 1993 was particularly packed. ‘That was my busiest week. Most of the choir, being church musicians, had had Holy Week, which is massive, then Easter Day, and we had barely left church for seven days. Then we moved up to Oxford, where for two days we recorded Lassus’ Masses for Five Voices. A day off … then two days of English madrigals and songs, having had to fit in the rehearsals for it the week before Easter. I will never forget that. People were absolutely exhausted but they just got better and better through the Lassus disc, and it shouldn’t have been possible to make that English disc. But we did and it sounds excellent!’
Summerly and his groups now make fewer recordings, though he still appears regularly on new releases: he must be one of the most anthologised conductors on Naxos. His recordings, largely of sacred music, have appeared on Classical Meditation, Chill with Bach, A Bride’s Guide to Wedding Music, Classics Go To War, Mystic Voices, 101 Classics – The Best Loved Classical Melodies, Caravaggio: Music of His Time, Adagio Chillout, Music to Die For, and many more. Summerly is not at all precious. ‘I am flattered! It doesn’t matter where the music ends up. If it gets into someone’s home and on someone’s CD player or computer that’s fine!’ – very much a Naxos message.
Helmut Müller-Brühl
For more than fifteen years the Cologne Chamber Orchestra (CCO), under the baton of Helmut Müller-Brühl, has recorded exclusively for Naxos, building a discography of over sixty discs. It was an important association, as the orchestra set a certain style of performance for the central eighteenth- and nineteenth-century works that it covered on the label, drawing on its unusual history. Formed in 1924 by Hermann Abendroth, it switched to period instruments in 1976 and for a decade was prominent in historical performance. In 1987 Müller-Brühl decided on a return to modern instruments, but with a continuation of period-performance techniques. Although it is now commonplace, this approach was novel at the time. There were various practical reasons that contributed to Müller-Brühl’s decision, some concerning the size of concert halls; but there were musical reasons as well.
‘To achieve the correct period style it is far more important to observe historical performance practice and information than to use so-called original instruments; and by observing historical performance practice, including reading the material correctly, an historically informed interpretation can be achieved even with modern instruments.’
The change was successfully managed, and by the mid-1990s the CCO with Müller-Brühl was well established as a leading German chamber orchestra, no longer using historical instruments. It was at this point that Müller-Brühl met Klaus Heymann, whose own predilections towards performance favoured the CCO’s approach. The environment of the first meeting, Müller-Brühl remembers, was not particularly auspicious: ‘We met at the Airport Hotel at Frankfurt Airport in 1996 during a flight transfer.’ But there was an immediate understanding and within months the CCO was recording for Naxos, starting with oboe concertos by J.S. Bach, played by Christian Hommel. It was a declaration from both Müller-Brühl and Heymann that period style and the faithful presentation of a Baroque or Classical composer was possible in conjunction with the benefits of modern instruments. Müller-Brühl is unequivocal in his belief that the series of recordings devoted to orchestral works by J.S. Bach opened a new chapter in recording. ‘They were the first convincing recordings on modern instruments and are today, as a set of complete works, second to none,’ he declares confidently. The Beethoven recordings were made with a similar conviction. ‘There are many Beethoven symphony cycles on the market, but ours, in addition to being highly developed, freshly interpreted and in an historically informed performance style, is also one that can actually be heard! I am glad that the release of the Ninth Symphony completes our cycle in time for the twenty-fifth anniversary of Naxos.’
The sixty-plus recordings made by the CCO encompass works by J.S. Bach and Vivaldi, eight volumes of Haydn symphonies, three volumes of Mozart symphonies, and many concerto discs – including discoveries such as the violin concertos by Vanhal and Saint-Georges, recorded with Takako Nishizaki. Müller-Brühl is particularly pleased with the disc of Telemann’s ‘Darmstadt Overtures’, which won a Cannes Classical Award in 2001. ‘This was such an event, since no other group playing Baroque music on modern instruments had won this award before. To me it was a breakthrough which showed that the validity of Baroque music performance is primarily achieved though an historically informed interpretation and not merely through the use of historical instruments.’
Throughout the sixteen years of his recording for Naxos Müller-Brühl has been involved in frequent discussions with Heymann over repertoire. ‘At the beginning most of the suggestions came from Klaus Heymann, such as the Telemann and many Haydn symphonies. Bach, Mozart and Beethoven are my gods. The more unknown musical treasures are the result of our cooperation in choosing repertoire. I was always impressed by the high quality of the Naxos recordings and was happy to see that this high standard of quality was available to the public at an attractive price. The close relationship I have had with Klaus Heymann and Naxos counts among some of the best experiences of my life and I am forever grateful for this.’
Takuo Yuasa
The Japanese-born Takuo Yuasa has an impressively diverse discography on Naxos. On more than thirty recordings he conducts music that includes violin concertos by Vieuxtemps and Lalo, Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht and a selection of Webern, and works by Rubbra, Glass and Arvo Pärt; while in his home country he is known especially for helping to bring back into musical awareness a host of Japanese composers, including Yamada and Yashiro.
In many w
ays, his Naxos recordings mirror his personal musical journey. At the age of eighteen he left Japan to study first of all in the US and then in Europe (with Hans Swarowsky in Austria, Igor Markevitch in France and Franco Ferrara in Italy) before he became assistant to Lovro von Matacic, working in Monte Carlo, Milan and Vienna. He remembers the start of his Naxos journey very clearly. It was 1996 and he was scheduled to conduct the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. Shortly before he arrived he received a letter from Heymann, the opening of which he can recall even now.
Dear Mr Yuasa,
I want to record with you.
‘That was the first sentence. He didn’t introduce himself. He came straight to the point. That is so Klaus. Then he said would I be exclusive!’
They met when Yuasa arrived in Hong Kong, and a year later he made his first recording: Veni, Veni, Emmanuel and Tryst by the Scottish composer James MacMillan. Having conducted the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra for some years (he still has a flat in Glasgow), Yuasa was familiar with MacMillan; but it was still a challenging start. The recording was made with the Ulster Orchestra in the responsive Ulster Hall – Yuasa became the orchestra’s principal guest conductor in 1998, which was the start of a long, amicable association – and went on to sell 20,000 copies worldwide. It was a very respectable figure for Scottish contemporary music.
Yuasa initially concentrated on British music. He recorded Tavener’s The Protecting Veil and In Alium, which turned out to be another contemporary music hit and sold 40,000 copies; and he went back to the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra to record Britten’s Violin Concerto (played by Rebecca Hirsch) and Cello Symphony (played by Tim Hugh). Both these recordings were released in 1999. The following years saw more British repertoire, including Rubbra’s Violin Concerto and two recordings in the ‘British Piano Concertos’ series (Harty and Rawsthorne).
Yuasa had to learn all these works specially for the recordings but he was comfortable with that, having always been able to get to grips with a new score quickly. ‘This was thanks to my background in theory and composition with my professor, Hans Swarowsky. Most of the lessons were taken up by score reading, so now I have a very clear method in my approach to the score.’ His most testing time in this skill was when he came to record Inflight Entertainment, Powerhouse and other works by the Australian composer Graeme Koehne with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Yuasa was conducting in Oslo and at short notice was asked to fly to Australia to do the recording. The score arrived just two days before he boarded the plane, but he was in command of the music by the time he walked into Sydney Town Hall. ‘Fortunately, it was a very clear score and musically it wasn’t complicated!’ That was in January 2001. Circumstances meant that despite the urgency in the making of the recording, the CD was not released until October 2004 (which gives just a glimpse of another side to the record business).
As time passed, Yuasa’s contemporary music discography expanded. He recorded Philip Glass’s Violin Concerto and Michael Nyman’s Piano Concerto (made from the film score of The Piano); and Arvo Pärt’s Tabula Rasa (with Collage über B-A-C-H and Symphony No. 3), which has sold 60,000 copies.
Yuasa points out that being Japanese but having trained in Europe, there was not an obvious musical route for him to take. ‘Klaus asked me what I wanted to record, and if I was Finnish I could have said Sibelius.’ Yuasa suggested the Second Viennese School, because he had spent so many of his younger years steeped in that European tradition: his recording of music by Webern, including Passacaglia, Symphony and Five Pieces, remains an important one for him. Perhaps surprisingly, he values equally his disc of music by Honegger, which includes the Symphony No. 3 ‘Liturgique’ and Pacific 231.
During 2001 his Naxos career took an unexpected turn. ‘I remember when Klaus approached me right at the beginning, he mentioned – it was just a hint of a suggestion – that one day I could do some Japanese music. It didn’t really stay in my mind, until a few years later he called me in Tokyo one day and he said he wanted to start recording Japanese repertoire.’ Naxos had not gained as strong a presence in Japan as Heymann felt it should have done (after all, the country is one of the largest markets for classical music), so he had decided to do some Japanese symphonic repertoire that he had heard about, despite its being little known outside the country.
Yuasa was entrusted with these works, and made the world-premiere recording of Yamada’s Overture with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. ‘The Overture dates from 1912, and was written in the style of Weber or Mendelssohn. Yamada’s next work, Symphony in D “Triumph and Peace”, was in a slightly later style; but, by the following year, two tone poems showed that he’d had contact with Richard Strauss – Yamada had travelled to Europe and heard Strauss conduct.’
‘Japanese Classics’ developed into an ongoing series that initially explored pre-Second World War symphonic music, showing that Takemitsu did not emerge from nowhere: he was building on a Western-influenced but Japanese classical tradition. Although some of these works had been recorded before, Naxos’s series, put together by the musicologist Morihide Katayama, gave the label the presence it was looking for in Japan. There are now some twenty recordings, half of which have been conducted by Yuasa. Many of the volumes – featuring composers such as Yashiro, Ohki, Moroi and Mayuzumi – were made with Western orchestras, including the Ulster Orchestra and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra; this was regarded as a bonus for Japanese CD buyers, who were pleased that their music had travelled abroad.
The commercial success of the recordings brought the music to a wider Japanese audience than ever before. ‘Naxos should get credit for many Japanese people becoming interested in their own repertoire. Nowadays you can often find orchestral concerts including Japanese repertoire, much more than before the Naxos series came out.’ It also had the effect of establishing Yuasa’s reputation as a conductor in Japan. For decades he was a Japanese export to Europe, but the recordings led to his conducting more frequently in Japanese cities. He currently divides his time between Europe, Osaka and Tokyo, where he also teaches at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music. This has a professional orchestra and a recording faculty, and Yuasa organised the most recent ‘Japanese Classics’ release, Hashimoto’s Symphony No. 2, to be recorded there. ‘These Naxos recordings have made me known to the musical audiences in my own country.’
Leonard Slatkin
Ever since the first performance in 1984 of William Bolcom’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, based on the poems of William Blake, Leonard Slatkin had wanted to record it. He had conducted it a few times in concert but, as the years rolled by, the prospect of a recording seemed to become increasingly distant: lasting nearly three hours and calling for huge forces (orchestra, chorus and soloists, as well as musicians from outside the classical milieu: nearly 500 performers in total), it was just too big, too demanding and ultimately too costly to take into a studio. But in 2004 Slatkin saw his opportunity emerge. It was the twentieth anniversary of the work’s premiere, and the University of Michigan, where it had originally been performed, was able to provide the players and even find sponsorship – after all, Bolcom himself was on its composition faculty. Slatkin found himself in the right place at the right time: he was just taking up a new appointment as director of the nearby Detroit Symphony Orchestra and was keen to make contact with the university, aware as he was of its high standard of music-making. He was prepared to volunteer his services and he knew that many of the soloists would do the same: this was a special work.
He knew that Naxos already had a relationship with Bolcom so he approached Heymann. ‘I hadn’t met Klaus at that point, but of course, having bounced around from record company to record company over the years, I was following the industry as much as I could. It was clearly changing but I was one of those people who thought that Naxos was doing exactly the right thing – offering repertoire that was unusual or familiar at prices that most people could afford. So I suggested doing the Bolcom, and he agreed.’ It was dec
ided to capture a live performance and use that as the basis for the recording (with an inevitable patch session afterwards); in the event, it was not quite so simple. For two months the university music faculty made the work a priority, preparing for the concert on 8 April 2004. Slatkin moved in to work with the musicians two weeks beforehand, which is an unusually generous amount of rehearsal time with the conductor for an event of this kind. He was impressed by the musicians. ‘If you didn’t put on the cover that it was a university chorus and orchestra nobody would know that it wasn’t professional. That is the level of young musicians these days: it is so high.’ The concert was a huge success and the musicians prepared for the post-concert patching session. ‘We knew we would have to get rid of some audience noise, and because of the logistics of the piece it wasn’t practical to take some of it from the concert: the forces were disposed all over the stage, with chorus and chamber pieces. Some sections would have to be recorded separately.’ In the end, it proved impossible to use recordings from the concert performance because of balance issues created by amplification in the hall. It was all re-recorded in the succeeding day and a half, including some hours immediately after the concert.
There was an extraordinary, unanimous agreement for nearly everyone to stay on site until the recording was completed. Production control was in the hands of the experienced Naxos producer Tim Handley, with the engineer David Lau and the whole team working late into the night. The sessions continued the following day, the musicians and the recording team working for nearly nine hours non-stop to finish everything. It was a momentous challenge, one to which a youthful, vigorous and talented university team can perhaps rise better than most. The spirit of it came through on the three-CD set. It was released worldwide in October 2004 to widespread acclaim, and in February 2006 it scooped four GRAMMY Awards: Best Classical Album, Best Choral Performance, Best Classical Contemporary Composition, and Producer Of The Year for Tim Handley. It justified Slatkin’s belief in the project and his ability to bring it together. ‘Bill and I were students together in 1964 in Aston. I have played a number of his pieces over the years, commissioned one of his symphonies and recorded another. I love doing his music – it is so off the wall, such great fun.’
The Story of Naxos Page 22