Heymann’s long-standing plans – coupled with ideas from Naxos production manager Peter Bromley, a specialist in this area – are producing an unmatched range of Italian music from those years, written in a style that is generally late Romantic, sometimes neo-classical, yet progressive, distinct and often strikingly individual. Within it is a growing list of works by Alfredo Casella (1883–1947) (including his symphonies and concertos), two volumes of the complete Shakespeare Overtures by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895–1968), orchestral works and chamber music by Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880–1968), and a two-disc survey of the complete piano music of Giorgio Federico Ghedini (1892–1965). There are many world-premiere recordings among the works on these discs: sixteen for Malipiero, thirteen for Ghedini, eleven for Castelnuovo-Tedesco, four for Casella and two for Pizzetti.
Interestingly, the works have not always been recorded with Italian orchestras and musicians. Those represented include the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma conducted by Francesco La Vecchia playing Martucci, Casella, Malipiero, Busoni, Petrassi and Ferrara; and Massimo Giuseppe Bianchi playing Ghedini’s piano music on a Fazioli piano in Perugia, with scores based on manuscript sources provided by the composer’s daughter, Maria Grazia Ghedini.
However, also contributing to this series are the Thessaloniki Symphony Orchestra conducted by Myron Michailidis, playing Pizzetti, and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrew Penny, playing Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Some of the recordings from the earlier Marco Polo days, including the complete published symphonies by Malipiero, were made with the Moscow Symphony Orchestra under Antonio de Almeida. World-premiere recordings of a number of Malipiero’s earliest works, including Pause del silenzio, Impressioni dal vero and Sinfonia degli eroi, have also been made by the Thessaloniki Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma.
Guitar Collection
There is a worldwide community of people who love the classical guitar. There are similar communities for many other instruments, but particularly so for the guitar because it is, largely, a solo instrument. The Canada-based guitarist–producer Norbert Kraft has since 1994 been serving this community through Naxos; and, with nearly 100 titles, he has created a lively but comprehensive catalogue of guitar recordings. It began with his own recordings of popular repertoire, made in the UK; but once he had established his own studio and editing suite in Canada the ‘Guitar Collection’ began to grow substantially. It is now the biggest single catalogue of classical guitar recordings in the world.
All the major figures are represented. Quintets by Luigi Boccherini, sonatas by Ferdinando Carulli and the works for violin and guitar by Nicolò Paganini open the Classical repertoire for the instrument, though there are transcriptions from the Baroque period too. There are fifteen CDs devoted to the music of Fernando Sor, four volumes of works by Napoléon Coste (1805–1883), as well as the Spanish Dances and Escenas poeticas by Enrique Granados. But it is the twentieth-century music for the instrument that forms the bulk of the series. This is considerably varied: from Europe, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Joaquín Rodrigo and Hans Werner Henze; and from Latin America, Agustín Barrios Mangoré, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Antonio Lauro and Astor Piazzolla. The ‘Guitar Collection’ also draws on new recordings made by winners of guitar competitions across the world.
Organ Encyclopedia
Fans of the organ form a similarly defined community and the Naxos ‘Organ Encyclopedia’ set out to cover the main ground. There is now a catalogue of nearly 100 titles presenting music spanning 500 years, from the early Renaissance to the present day. There are five volumes of the early Baroque composer Heinrich Scheidemann and seven volumes of the mid-Baroque Dietrich Buxtehude. Wolfgang Rübsam has also recorded the major works of Bach, though these appear in the main Naxos catalogue.
The Romantic era’s Joseph Rheinberger is best known for his many fine solo organ sonatas, eight volumes of which appear in the Encyclopedia and are played by Rübsam; and Felix Mendelssohn contributed six worthy sonatas of his own to the organ literature that are also included here. Of equal note are the works by the influential Belgian organist and composer César Franck; Eric Lebrun plays two volumes of these.
The music of Louis Vierne, Max Reger and the prolific Marcel Dupré (thirteen volumes on Naxos) represents the late Romantic and early modern era’s penchant for harmonic complexity and virtuosity. The bracing music of twentieth-century composers Jehan Alain and Jean Langlais straddles tonality and is somewhat more determinedly modern in conception. One of the most recent releases in the ‘Organ Encyclopedia’ is the GRAMMY Award-winning recording from Olivier Messiaen specialist Paul Jacobs of Livre du Saint-Sacrement, played on the organ of the Church of St Mary the Virgin, New York City. Recordings of Mendelssohn and Pachelbel are among the bestsellers.
Amadis, Donau, Lydian and Linz
In the first decade of Naxos, as CD manufacturing became more competitive, there emerged a need for super-budget labels selling at below the Naxos price and it was to meet this that Heymann started four new labels: Amadis, Donau, Lydian and Linz. These CDs were sold in outlets that would not take Naxos, and the repertoire was sometimes licensed by bookshops and other chains that wanted to create their own classical CD brands. Around 180 recordings were made and, despite their target audience and the tight budget involved, some of them turned out very well. Once more, it was central repertoire: symphonies by Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Brahms; piano concertos by Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin; the popular violin concertos; Famous Waltzes; and piano works by Chopin, Grieg and Mendelssohn. But there was some unexpected repertoire as well, including Shostakovich’s Quartets Nos. 2 and 4, sonatas by Rossini for wind quartet, and harpsichord music by Rameau. These recordings now have a new life online.
Naxos Jazz
A Naxos jazz label, to be born in the West but to draw from different traditions, seemed an obvious possibility. It would be based on the same Naxos principles of high musical standards but low cost. The search began for players who had a following but lacked an existing record deal. The label was launched in 1997 with a varying group of releases, from the New York Jazz Collective’s I Don’t Know This World Without Don Cherry to Havana Flute Summit – the latter with some charismatic Latin flautists, including Richard Egues and Orlando ‘Maraca’ Vallé. On the whole they were well received critically, and the label moved energetically forward with the intention of a global perspective. On the Other Hand features German–Australian drummer Niko Schäuble; various Scandinavian groups include the Finnish jazz punk Lenni-Kalle Taipale Trio with Nothing to Hide (the single top-seller on the label); and the Germany-based sextet Ugetsu comprises players of Russian, German, American and Australian origin, led by bassist Martin Zenker.
The mastermind behind the label was Australian jazz pianist Mike Nock, whose brief was to record leading-edge jazz from around the world. Over a period of four years around sixty albums were released, generally to a very positive critical reception. But the culture of jazz proved too different from that of classical. There is a dependence upon star performers, or at least performers who are widely known; there is an incredible diversity of jazz forms, making it difficult to focus on a specific audience; and the Naxos distribution network had its own limitations because those who were good at getting music into shops and promoting it were specialists in classical, not jazz. New releases stopped in 2001, though with sales of more than 500,000 it was not a wholly unsuccessful venture. Many of the titles continue to sell in modest but regular amounts.
The main reason for the label’s collapse was that in the world’s biggest jazz market, the United States, non-American jazz does not sell well. In addition, the contemporary cover art did not work for a genre in which artist pictures were the rule; and the label did not have a champion within the company who could push subsidiaries and distributors to pay attention to it.
Naxos World
A similar story is reflected by the Naxos World label. Hopes were high in 2000 that the many tra
ditions in world and folk music could become a part of Naxos. It certainly covered the globe from the start, beginning with a volume of sitar music by Irshad Khan (who was establishing himself as a fine player, moving well beyond being just the son of a distinguished father, Imrat Khan) and encompassing, in the very first year, music from China, Colombia, West Africa and Thailand. One of the bestsellers on the label came also in 2000: Bhangra Beatz, involving a group of musicians from India and the UK playing a very lively contemporary fusion of traditional and modern, mixing the Punjab tradition with reggae, R&B, rap and dance music. It sold over 30,000 units and was welcomed by Heymann for the way in which it took the Naxos label so emphatically into a totally new musical area. Dave Swarbrick, England’s most well-known and distinctive folk violinist, plays his own compositions on the label and the sound could not be more of a contrast.
The most successful recording came from a very different musical heritage: Tibet. The recording of monks from Sherab Ling Monastery, living in exile in India where they maintain their traditions of worship, made a striking impact; it features their characteristically low chanting, which makes the most of overtones, accompanied by cymbals. Also present are the Tibetan oboes (their continuous sound made possible by the players’ circular breathing) and the long, sonorous horns. This recording won the first ever GRAMMY Award for Naxos and sold more than 40,000 copies.
However, the specialist nature of world music, as of jazz, proved difficult to maintain and develop as a continuing thread within the Naxos label. Once again, this was partly due to the genre’s emphasis on individual performers rather than repertoire or types. It didn’t help that world music in the twenty-first century was, paradoxically, ever changing: it was, in a way, closer to pop than classical. Again, too, the label lacked an effective advocate inside the company. After forty releases, which also took in Slovenia, Russia, Cameroon and Iceland, the label was closed in 2003. Many of the recordings are still available on CD and all have a digital life, usefully broadening the musical base of the Naxos platforms.
Naxos Historical
As a collector Heymann was well aware of the legendary recordings made in the first half of the twentieth century, though perhaps his personal interest lay more in repertoire than in performance. Despite requests from some of the distributors, including Richard Winter at Gramola in Austria, he resisted for some years the idea of starting a section within Naxos devoted to historical recordings. ‘I had been reluctant to get into the “historical” business because, with so many different versions of the same performances already in the market, I didn’t have a unique angle. I only got interested when I was approached by the English producer–engineer Jonathan Wearn, who told me that he had access to the original masters [transcription discs] of historical broadcasts, which would offer us a distinctive quality advantage. Once we had started releasing these historical broadcasts, I was approached by Mark Obert-Thorn, widely regarded as one of the finest transfer engineers in the world, and he suggested that we also release restorations of commercial recordings. We started with Rachmaninov playing his own concertos and we were all surprised by the demand.’ That was in 1999. ‘To date, the recording of Piano Concertos Nos. 2 and 3 has sold over 120,000 copies on CD alone.’
Few of the early historical releases matched this enormous sale but the response was generally very positive. ‘I gave the green light to Mark to go ahead at full speed. Eventually he couldn’t cope by himself and he suggested bringing in Ward Marston, another leading transfer engineer. The big advantage both have is that they are not only technicians but musicians as well, so their technical work is informed by their musical instinct.’
The range grew rapidly. Heymann was heartened not only by the sales but also by the critical reception, which bordered on the extreme: some reviewers said of quite a few releases that they sounded better than they had ever done – even better than when they were first released. This is partly due to the skills employed in the transfers. It is an issue of both skill and taste in deciding how much to reduce the surface noise on an old tape, or 78, or whatever the original material may be: too little and the crackling is intrusive; too much and the individual sound, even the character, of the performer is lost. The success was also due to the diligence that Obert-Thorn and Marston employed in searching for the finest original sources they could lay their hands on. Often they would use two or three different original sources and bring the best sections together, though this can take hours of painstaking work. As central ‘historical players’, well networked within the rarefied world, they knew who was likely to have a pristine copy of a relatively obscure recording by Jussi Björling or Alfred Cortot.
Heymann, Obert-Thorn and Marston initially aimed at the more commercial titles but it rapidly became clear that a longer-term strategy was required, and development of this resulted in the pattern that exists today. With a few exceptions, Naxos stopped releasing restored broadcasts. Titles that were thought to be essential for Naxos Historical’s list began to be restored from the best available recordings sourced by the engineers.
In 2000 the historical recording division expanded with the creation of Naxos Jazz Legends, Naxos Nostalgia and Naxos Musicals. Other transfer engineers who specialised in these historical genres came on board, including David Lennick. This kind of non-classical repertoire was not a totally new departure for Naxos as it already had a substantial film music catalogue, a contemporary jazz label and even audiobooks, but it was still a surprise to find Nat King Cole, Noël Coward, Cole Porter or the Ink Spots crooning under a Naxos banner.
After more than a decade of releases Naxos Historical has taken a secure place in the overall Naxos catalogue, with nearly 1,000 titles having sold a combined total of six million CDs. The balance remains in favour of classical titles, which number over 600 (including both single CDs and boxed sets) and have achieved sales of well over four million. Jazz Legends, Nostalgia and Musicals, as well as a smattering of blues (including Bessie Smith), are represented by 340 titles, with sales of nearly two million. The continued expansion of the historical list has been limited by US copyright law: the United States is the only country in the world in which sound recordings never enter the public domain (at least they won’t until 2067) because they are covered by state common-law copyright and not federal law. This is why all Naxos historical recordings, of any genre, are forbidden from being sold in the US. As a large part of the world market, especially for jazz and nostalgia, exists in the US, Naxos is restricted in what it can viably bring out. The release schedule is therefore much more restrained than it once was.
Nevertheless, Naxos Historical is an extraordinary archive library, in terms of both sound and content. The classical section is unrivalled for its quality and title selection. The focus of historical recording is, of course, on performance, which is why most of the well-known and often most important recordings are arranged according to instrument, in the ‘Great’ series. ‘Great Violinists’, ‘Great Cellists’, ‘Great Pianists’ and ‘Great Singers’ carry the foremost instrumentalists of the twentieth century up to 1960; and ‘Great Conductors’, ‘Great Opera Recordings’ and ‘Great Operetta Recordings’ complete the series (apart from ‘Great Violists’, which at the time of writing has just one example: the English viola player William Primrose playing Harold in Italy and Walton’s Viola Concerto!).
There is also a highly specialist biographical series that includes The A–Z of Conductors and The A–Z of Pianists, each comprising 300 artist biographies, four CDs and a dedicated website with more examples of the musicians featured. The A–Z of Singers and The A–Z of String Players are in the pipeline.
It is remarkable how durable some of these artists are – that years after their death, when the sound of the original recordings cannot match twenty-first century fidelity, they are still in demand. The ‘Great’ players include: Pablo Casals (his performance of Bach’s Cello Suites has sold in excess of 100,000 copies), Sergey Rachmaninov, Glenn Gould (his perform
ance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations sold 25,000 copies in five years), Artur Schnabel, Vladimir Horowitz and Edwin Fischer (sales of his set of Bach’s Forty-Eight Preludes and Fugues have reached over 40,000 copies). Among the violinists, Yehudi Menuhin’s early recording of Elgar’s Violin Concerto coupled with the First Violin Concerto by Bruch has sold more than 35,000 copies but is topped by the 1939/40 recording of Jascha Heifetz playing concertos by Brahms and Beethoven, which has achieved sales of 45,000 copies.
But did anyone ever think there would be, on a budget label, the five-volume complete edition of the Polish pianist Ignaz Friedman, or thirteen volumes of Benno Moiseiwitsch, or three volumes of Women at the Piano: An Anthology of Historic Performances between 1926 and 1954? What gems are hidden in there!
Topping individual sales among the ‘Great Singers’, perhaps unexpectedly, is the Swedish tenor Jussi Björling: the CD of his opera aria recordings between 1936 and 1948 was a hit all over Scandinavia, selling more than 60,000 copies. There are other standards too, such as Kathleen Ferrier’s immortal recording of Das Lied von der Erde with Bruno Walter. What about Maria Callas? Her recordings continue to have appeal, as do those of Beniamino Gigli (who is represented by the ultimate fifteen-volume complete edition), Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Kirsten Flagstad (heard with Lauritz Melchior in the rapturous 1936 recording of Tristan und Isolde conducted in London by Fritz Reiner).
Showing how fashions change, there is also the 1956 recording of Peter Cornelius’ The Barber of Baghdad with a stellar cast of Oskar Czerwenka in the title role plus Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Nicolai Gedda, with Erich Leinsdorf conducting – that is on a budget label with a superb transfer, excellent notes, and Weber’s one-act opera Abu Hassan thrown in for good measure! Every one of these historic recordings is presented with the level of care applied to all Naxos releases, carrying all the relevant documentation and notes.
The Story of Naxos Page 28