Witold Lutoslawski
In the same year (1937) that Szymanowski, director of the Warsaw Conservatory, died of tuberculosis, Witold Lutoslawski received his composition diploma there. He was twenty-four. Lutoslawski was another composer admired by Heymann, and when Naxos began a strong relationship with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra and Antoni Wit, he had the musical forces he needed. From the mid-1990s Wit recorded the symphonies, Concerto for Orchestra, Double Concerto for oboe and harp, Cello Concerto and much more, eventually recording every orchestral work of the composer.
Krzysztof Penderecki and Henryk Górecki
Krzysztof Penderecki and Henryk Górecki were both born in 1933, twenty years after Lutoslawski. At first it was Penderecki who generally made a stronger musical impact in the Western world, with Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima and then particularly with his deeply committed choral works such as the St Luke Passion and A Polish Requiem; but it was Górecki’s Symphony No. 3 ‘Symphony of Sorrowful Songs’ that became a totally unexpected worldwide hit, and the Naxos recording by the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra under Antoni Wit took it to an even wider audience. The same forces recorded Symphony No. 2 ‘Copernican’, coupled with Beatus Vir, in 2001. This regular recording programme in Poland with Wit, who knew both composers extremely well, put Naxos in an ideal position to provide truly authentic performances. In fact Lutoslawski, Penderecki and Górecki have all discussed the performance of their music with Wit before rehearsals, performances and recordings. Heymann has made a commitment to record all of Penderecki’s orchestral and choral–orchestral works – an ongoing project, since the composer is still composing!
United Kingdom
The UK was the first Naxos territory to record methodically the music of its major national composers using its own musicians: the intention was to create the first budget-price CD catalogue of British music. After a relatively quiet nineteenth century there emerged a raft of composers born in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including Arnold Bax, Frank Bridge, Arthur Bliss, Ralph Vaughan Williams and William Walton. They led to the generation that would dominate the post-Second World War years up to the early 1970s, represented by Benjamin Britten and Malcolm Arnold. The Naxos recordings, which supported the revival of interest in these composers, were more than just reliable: bold statements were being made. The repertoire of Britten on Naxos has benefitted from the absorption of recordings from the defunct Collins Classics label but there are fine original Naxos recordings too, including the Violin Concerto coupled with the Cello Symphony, featuring the violinist Rebecca Hirsch and the cellist Tim Hugh; the Maggini Quartet recordings; and the War Requiem. The Naxos commitment to the music of Malcolm Arnold has been considerable, with all the symphonies, the string quartets, and the chamber music for wind being released over a period of ten years.
Attention has also been paid to the succeeding generation of composers. The UK found that success by other labels at full price did not preclude an opportunity for Naxos at budget price; in fact many listeners welcomed the Naxos recordings.
Sir John Tavener
Sir John Tavener (born in 1944) has had two undisputed hits: The Protecting Veil for cello and orchestra and the choral work Song for Athene. The Naxos recording of the former by cellist Maria Kliegel, with the Ulster Orchestra and Takuo Yuasa, has sold over 40,000 copies since its first release in 1999; and sales of Song for Athene and other works sung by the Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge, directed by Christopher Robinson, have exceeded 60,000 since the CD’s release in 2000. Naxos didn’t stop there. More choral works were recorded as well as a CD of piano music; and John Tavener: A Portrait marked his sixtieth birthday. This was a special release, with music (including the world-premiere recording of Prayer of the Heart, a piece written for and sung by the Icelandic pop singer Björk), an extended biography and a recorded interview with the composer. ‘The Icelandic pop singer Björk asked me if I would write something for her and the Brodsky Quartet. I’d heard her voice, and I liked also in her this raw, primordial sound. I thought of the ejaculatory prayer they call the “Jesus Prayer”, “Lord Jesus, have mercy on me”, and I set it in three languages: in Coptic, in English and in Greek. And I thought the way she sang it was quite wonderful. It couldn’t possibly be sung by anybody else but her, or someone with a voice very, very similar to hers.’
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies
Perhaps the most unique contribution Naxos has made to contemporary music has been the Naxos Quartets, a cycle of ten string quartets commissioned by the label from Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (born in 1934), Master of the Queen’s Music. Heymann explains, ‘When the opportunity arose to commission ten string quartets from one of the greatest living composers, not only in England but internationally, we were of course very excited. We wondered whether he would be able to stick to the schedule, but he did, and what we have is a cycle of quartets that responds to the natural environment where he lives, in Orkney, but also sometimes comments on the wider events of his time. It has been a landmark in Naxos’s history.’
Certainly the Naxos Quartets were a huge part of the life of Maxwell Davies himself between 2002 and 2007. No. 1 was premiered on 23 October 2002 in London’s Wigmore Hall and No. 10 was finished in 2007, the final recording being released in 2008. The composer says, ‘Right from the outset I viewed this as some kind of novel in ten chapters where they would all be part of a cycle and thematically interconnected. I live in Orkney. I have lived there for well over thirty-five years and I spend a lot of time just walking on the beach. This is a wonderful environment in which to just think. It’s not silent, but the sea makes a wonderful noise: it is always changing, it is exciting, it is soothing. This is the background to all of the quartets but particularly No. 5 ‘Lighthouses of Orkney and Shetland’, because from my house you can see the North Ronaldsay light and from just around the corner you can see the light from four lighthouses, and I just love the rhythms.’ He attended almost every recording session. ‘I didn’t need to say very much because I had my say at the first performance, but I like to be there. Occasionally I have made last-minute changes to chords or something, just to improve the sonority.
‘I have often said that writing for string quartet is like dancing naked in public. There is nowhere to hide. You have four voices there and you can’t hide behind them. If you are writing for larger forces, you can write brass chords, or something for percussion if the interest flags a bit (which I hope it doesn’t!). But with a string quartet you are totally exposed. Writing this cycle of quartets would have been much, much more difficult had I not had the constant rapport, exchange of ideas, constant encouragement, even corrections sometimes, from the Maggini Quartet.
‘Quartet No. 10 is much better than Quartet No. 1 in that I understood much more about writing for string quartet by the time I came to do the last one. Of course I had written a string quartet many years before, and I had studied them, particularly a lot of Haydn; but when I came to No. 2 I knew a bit more, and No. 3 a bit more than that, and so on right the way through.’ There was an extra political edge to No. 3. ‘The Third Quartet started off being fairly well behaved. An ordinary string quartet with an Allegro first movement. But then the Iraq war started. I was right at the head of that huge crowd that protested in London. This anger got into the music but I think it is the function of music to represent everything you believe to be right and true, and to make statements no matter how they might offend politicians, for instance. The war was very much uppermost in my mind at that moment and it erupts into the music with cold fury.’ Naxos has also released Peter Maxwell Davies: A Portrait, and will release, over time, all his Collins recordings.
James MacMillan
The choral works of the Scottish composer James MacMillan (born in 1959) are among the most challenging on Naxos; his large and uncompromising composition for percussion and orchestra Veni, Veni, Emmanuel was undoubtedly an important work of the 1990s. Coupled with Tryst,
and played by the Ulster Orchestra under Takuo Yuasa, it was released on Naxos in 1998 and emphasised the kind of work that the label wanted to include in its coverage of contemporary music. It was followed by Seven Last Words from the Cross with other choral works, a disc which was particularly commended by MacMillan himself: ‘It has been an enormous thrill hearing my music being performed by The Dmitri Ensemble. This excellent, young ensemble brings a breath of fresh air to music-making in this country, and they are fortunate in their director, Graham Ross – one of the most exciting new musicians to appear on the radar. I am honoured that they are choosing to mark my fiftieth birthday with this disc on Naxos, bringing together a number of different choral works from 1993 to 2005.’
John Rutter
The music of John Rutter (born in 1945) is completely different from that of MacMillan or Maxwell Davies but also rightly claims a presence on Naxos. He is unquestionably the contemporary choral composer whose music is most frequently sung in the UK, his mellifluous style proving highly attractive to choirs, even those further afield. He has his own full-price label, Collegium Records, for which he records his music with his own choir; yet he has welcomed new recordings of his most popular works on Naxos and has even been actively involved in the sessions as producer. He offered to produce the recordings of both his Requiem and the Mass of the Children (both performed by The Choir of Clare College, Cambridge under Timothy Brown), convinced that these discs would bring his music to an even wider audience.
Other Contemporary Voices
There are many other iconic works from composers of our time to be found in the Naxos catalogue. Olivier Messiaen has a growing section led by the imposing Turangalîla Symphony (played by the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra under Antoni Wit, who had himself worked with Messiaen) and strengthened by two CDs from the Orchestre National de Lyon and the Quartet for the End of Time (one of the greatest twentieth-century chamber works). Paul Jacobs’s recording of the Livre du Saint-Sacrement won the 2011 GRAMMY for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (without Orchestra). Staying with France, there is Idil Biret’s remarkable recording of the piano sonatas by Pierre Boulez; and, from the following generation, several recordings of music by Laurent Petitgirard (born in 1950), including two of his operas.
The distinctive Estonian voice of Arvo Pärt (born in 1935), sacred yet modern, is represented by five full discs covering his most important pieces for orchestra (including Tabula Rasa, Symphony No. 3 and Fratres) and the choral works Passio and the Berliner Messe. Heading further east to Japan, we find the equally recognisable voice of Tōru Takemitsu (1930–1996). Four discs present a good cross-section, with orchestral works such as A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden and chamber music with flute.
Rediscovered scores come to Naxos too. The English conductor Mark Fitz-Gerald and Naxos production manager Peter Bromley, who keeps an up-to-date discography of Dmitry Shostakovich, have worked with Shostakovich’s widow to bring some forgotten music to the studio. This includes the film scores for The Girlfriends and Odna (‘Alone’); and, from 1945, his initial idea for the opening movement of Symphony No. 9 (which bears no relation to the eventual work).
Peter Breiner – Arranger
Most unusually, Naxos has its own arranger: the Slovakian-born but North American-resident pianist, conductor, composer and arranger Peter Breiner. When he suggested to Heymann that he arrange some of the biggest hits of The Beatles in the style of Handel and Bach for chamber orchestra, he met with scepticism. Surely those days of classical Beatles had gone? ‘Ok, but if we sell 3,000 I will be surprised,’ Heymann told Breiner. Twenty years later The Beatles Go Baroque, played by Peter Breiner and His Chamber Orchestra, has sold nearly 150,000 CDs (and thousands more downloads) and still sells well. It has the questionable distinction of being one of the most pirated works in the Naxos catalogue (a backhanded compliment of a kind) and it has even been illegally covered by a Ukrainian orchestra.
The association between Breiner and Heymann covers some three decades, stretching back even before Marco Polo. They think Breiner’s first arrangement might have been some Malaysian folksongs for the early Heymann company Pacific Music, but neither can quite remember. Since then he has produced more than 1,000 arrangements, from Chinese pop songs for violin (for Nishizaki) and orchestra to a critically praised set of orchestral suites drawn from Janáek’s operas.
‘The first CD I did for Naxos as arranger and conductor was of Haydn and Boccherini cello concertos played by Ludovit Kanta – I wrote the cadenzas – and it is still available,’ comments Breiner. His closest association with a Naxos performer is with Takako Nishizaki: over the years he has arranged numerous pieces for violin and orchestra, for both concerts and recordings; her recordings of Chinese folk, pop and classical music have sold hundreds of thousands of CDs. The two have had a lot of MOR (‘middle-of-the-road’) fun over the years with O Sole Mio – Classic Love Songs for Violin and Orchestra, Russian Romance, Tchaikovsky: None but the Lonely Heart (a programme of Tchaikovsky’s songs arranged for violin and orchestra) and many more. He has also arranged music for other Naxos artists: his version of Granados’ Spanish Dances for guitar and orchestra recorded by Norbert Kraft proved an enduring bestseller for the label and showcased the virtuoso skills of the Canadian guitarist.
In 2006 Heymann proposed a more unusual project: a set of orchestral suites taken from operas by Janáek. Jenufa is one of Heymann’s favourite operas. ‘I felt that Janáek’s music should be known more widely, and a set of orchestral suites would bring him to a wider audience,’ said Heymann. Breiner was also keen. ‘Janáek is my favourite composer; I was born on the same day and we are countrymen!’ The resulting set of three CDs, with Breiner conducting the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, appeared in the top ten classical discs of the year in the Chicago Tribune in 2009.
The most ambitious, ongoing and breathtaking project Breiner has undertaken is the unique boxed set of The Complete National Anthems of the World, which aims to keep up to date with the anthems of all countries. Since the moment Heymann came up with the idea in 1995, it has been a wonderful headache for Breiner. The first set of six CDs of popular national anthems played by the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra came out the following year on Marco Polo. Then Heymann realised that international sporting events – all the way up to the pinnacle of sport, the Olympic Games – needed a reliable source of national anthems for medal ceremonies. No such up-to-date set existed. It proved to be one of Naxos’s greatest logistical challenges.
Each national anthem, reduced to a running time of a minute, had to be arranged and recorded, and then played to the Olympic committee of the particular country to be approved for use in international events. It is a continuing process, for countries change, anthems change, and views on arrangements change. Mixing music and politics is a world of mirrors and quicksand. ‘I could fill a book with anecdotes of responses from sports committees,’ smiles Breiner. ‘I sent my arrangement and recording of the Polish national anthem to the Polish national sports committee. They replied that they couldn’t give approval. They wanted me to record the anthem again: “Make it more like a march,” they insisted. “It is not enough like a march!” My response was: “It is never gonna be a march unless you grow a third leg, because the anthem is in three. It is a Mazurka!”’
The organisers of the Athens Olympics were impressed by the set and agreed, as 2004 approached, to use it as the official source of anthems for all medal ceremonies. A total of 202 anthems – the number of nations participating in the Athens Olympics – would be needed. It was unlikely that the anthem of Andorra or Palau would ever be heard in a medal ceremony, but Naxos couldn’t take the risk of not having it ready.
Many had to be rearranged and recorded: anthems alter with curious frequency. Extra sessions had to be booked with the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra in Bratislava. Every anthem had to be checked afresh. Shortly before the Games started, a member of the Athens Olympic Committee finally got
to meet the Russian ambassador and cultural attaché at the Russian Embassy in Athens. They listened carefully to the recording of their national anthem and proclaimed it an excellent performance. Then a Russian cleaning lady who was polishing the windows piped up. ‘Excuse me, Sirs, I am sorry to interrupt but I think you will find that our government changed the national anthem last week. We have a new one now.’ And she was right. Breiner arranged and recorded it in time for the first medal ceremonies.
All the anthems played in Athens were accurate, but Breiner encountered his fair share of controversy when some American commentators dubbed his arrangement of The Star-Spangled Banner ‘a Europe-friendly version’: according to some fervently patriotic Americans, the anthem was not sufficiently ‘chest-thumping, butt-kicking’. Fortunately Breiner was living in Toronto at the time. For the most part, however, his orchestrations were admired.
The sheer volume of music written by Breiner over the years is enormous. He used to keep the archive in two rooms in his home in Toronto but when he moved to New York in 2007 it was transferred to Naxos of America in Nashville for safe keeping. It filled an enormous truck and weighed 1.6 tonnes. Now it is archived carefully at the Naxos headquarters in Hong Kong. New pieces still arrive there on a regular basis – arrangements of operatic medleys for violin and orchestra, more operatic orchestral transcriptions, songs, new anthems … they cover an extraordinary range of music. ‘Music is a borderless land for me,’ says Breiner.
The Story of Naxos Page 25