He is a short, quietly spoken classical music writer, teacher, one-time violinist, viola player and pianist, and a descendant of Sir George Grove, founding editor of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Anderson ended up in Hong Kong in the 1970s – by a circuitous route from Oxford, via Ankara – playing the violin in film sessions and broadcasting as a member of The Ensemble of the Chinese University. It was here, at a concert, that he met Klaus Heymann. Anderson was as much an academic as a performer. After winning a classics and music scholarship to Lancing College (where Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears were then frequent visitors) he had gone on to study Literae human-iores at Wadham College, Oxford. This was followed by various jobs (including private tutor to the conductor Benjamin Zander) before he moved to Turkey, where he taught English in Ankara and tutored one of the sons of the Prime Minister. In 1973 he arrived in Hong Kong and lived there until 1996. In the early years he made his living partly through playing, partly as a music critic for various papers, including the South China Morning Post, and partly through teaching at the Chinese University and subsequently at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts and Hong Kong Baptist University.
So when he met Heymann sometime in 1973, Anderson was a proficient writer and academic who could speak English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, classical Greek, Latin and Turkish. He also had a smattering of Cantonese. With Heymann’s background of linguistics it was a perfect match. When Heymann launched his first classical label (Budget Classics – the introductory-level cassette series) he turned to Anderson for the notes. There was also the bonus of a free extended brochure on classical music for those who bought the whole series. His ingenuity was more sharply tested with Heymann’s next enterprise: HK, a label designed to record and release Chinese ‘Western’ classical music. Works such as The Butterfly Lovers, Yellow River Cantata and Fisherman’s Song of the East China Sea all needed notes. At least Anderson was in the right place and knew the right people to ask for information.
This was merely a warm-up for an even greater test to come, however: the start of Marco Polo in 1982. To write about popular classics, even Chinese ones, was relatively uncomplicated, but suddenly Anderson was required to write authoritatively and accurately on forgotten, neglected corners of music, when living in Hong Kong. In 1,000–1,200 concise yet accurate words he had to introduce and explain the forgotten works of Joseph Joachim or Anatol Liadov or Nikolay Myaskovsky or Kurt Atterberg or Wilhelm Furtwängler. He did have his own copy of the 1945 Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians at his home and there was the university library that he could access, though it meant time-consuming visits. Later Heymann bought a copy of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (‘MGG’) which was kept in his business offices, and fortunately Anderson could read German. But would these sources be sufficient for 1,200 words on overtures by Wagner that had never been recorded before? What did they sound like? They were rarely, if ever, played in concert. And what about Azio Corghi’s opera Divara – Wasser und Blut?
Anderson recalls the difficulties and the pleasures. Remembered now as a conductor, Furtwängler also wrote symphonies, choral works and concertos, and Heymann was keen to bring them to CD. That meant notes – lots of them. Anderson found commentaries on the works by Furtwängler himself but they were written in a tortuous philosophical language that foxed even native Germans in Hong Kong. Gleaning meaning was a tough task. He will never forget the struggle. On a different note, he clearly remembers, when researching for the notes to Tonadas, being warned by the composer Joaquín Nin-Culmell not to believe everything that his sister, Anaïs Nin, had to say. But Anderson was stimulated to find out more about Franz Schreker when Marco Polo made the world-premiere recording of Der ferne Klang. Similarly his musical curiosity made delving into the operas of Siegfried Wagner, son of Richard, an enjoyable task – even if the talent had been diluted down a generation.
By the time Marco Polo was established, Anderson had moved from Kowloon to a traditional Chinese village (without roads) in the New Territories called Siu Lek Yuen. It had some telephone communication but there were times when weather cut it off from Hong Kong. Anderson would sit in his small room with his Brother typewriter and pour out the words on Tournemire’s Symphony No. 6 or all eleven symphonies by Joachim Raff. There must have been times when he lauded Heymann’s completist instincts, and times when he was less impressed. Information came to his village room in a variety of forms – including photocopies of scores and articles from learned European musical journals, which he then had to translate – and was supplemented by his own discussions with conductors or musicians or agents.
In the early 1990s Naxos was well underway. If obscurity was not such an issue, volume was. The number of releases threatened time and again to overwhelm him, but Anderson heroically remained the solitary writer for years. He would write one note a day, and deliver them every few days by making the journey to the Naxos offices in Kowloon, the industrial part of Hong Kong. For years Klaus would take them home with him, read them overnight, make any slight alterations necessary, and return them to the offices. They would be typeset, and proofs would go to Heymann and Anderson for checking before the booklet was released. Being multilingual, they were both sticklers for the correct diacritics on the host of different names and words. On the whole, the notes were in English only; but if it was thought that a release would have a strong German or French or Spanish sale then translations were made, and both Anderson and Heymann would check those too. This continued almost to the present day (though there are many more people involved now). The amount of words that were written and read is incalculable. Anderson himself has no idea. ‘Only the Almighty knows,’ he says, not meaning Heymann, who also doesn’t know – though he once wondered whether Anderson was the most published writer in the world in terms of the quantity he has produced over decades. For not only was Anderson responsible for the notes, but he also wrote two massive anthologies: The A–Z of Classical Music and The A–Z of Opera. Each was released in a slipcase with two CDs in the late 1990s and sold hundreds of thousands of copies; they sold once more in massive quantities when revised, and enlarged versions were published a few years later.
In 1996 Keith Anderson left Hong Kong and settled in a small Welsh village. Now, in his eighties, he lives in Northumberland in the northeast of England. He was an early adopter of computers, owning one of the first Apple Macintosh Classics, and continues to write notes, proofread and deal with the stream of queries that come his way. One recent task that landed on his desk was to solve the identity of a poem translated by Stefan George and apparently misattributed to Baudelaire; it was typical of the varied odds and ends that Naxos sends his way.
Anderson’s achievements have not gone unnoticed through the years. Fanfare, the American music magazine, started to comment regularly on his notes when reviewing the discs. ‘Keith Anderson’s notes are good. Naxos’s sound is a bit grey…’ says one; ‘Faulknerian’ was another epithet. A different American critic remarked: ‘To add to the excellent presentation, Keith Anderson’s booklet notes are written to his usual high standard.’ Heymann salutes his work, pointing out with some satisfaction that no one has ever picked up a mistake in it – an almost unbelievable fact given the volume. He has also called him ‘one of the fathers of Naxos’. This may have added significance in that Anderson’s son, Anthony, joined Heymann’s company after university and is now part of the senior management team, holding wide responsibilities in the international business while also running Select Music, Naxos’s UK distribution company.
During the first half of the 1990s the job of production manager – overseeing all the booklets and the covers – was done in Hong Kong by Anthony Anderson. Coordinating these and assimilating the detail was becoming an immense task, but finding personnel in Hong Kong capable of doing the necessarily specialised work was proving increasingly difficult. More and more aspects of Naxos started to transfer to the UK, especially when Anthony returned in 1997 to become m
anaging director of Select Music. One of the first changes that he instigated was an upgrading of the label’s logo. The famous Naxos pillars, instead of being black on white, were given a more stylish look, becoming white on blue. In 1999 a new production manager, Peter Bromley, was appointed to oversee all the covers and booklets of releases, now numbering as many as 300 in any one year.
By the end of the twentieth century Naxos and Marco Polo had grown so fast, the recording schedule was so large, and the commissioning was so adventurous and spontaneous, that the labels were operating three months behind schedule. Matters were further complicated by the international nature of the design and production operation, with designers and editorial staff working on different continents. This situation was later facilitated by email and it is the norm now; but at a time when fax was still prominent it was ambitious, to say the least. With so much investment in new recordings their release was a priority, and less effort was devoted to backing-up and archiving; but an emerging need to prepare everything for Internet development meant that this area of activity was increasingly important. The considerable task of creating a proper, accessible archive was one of Bromley’s first. Naxos and Marco Polo CDs were being pressed by CD manufacturers in different continents, and sourcing old graphic files and dealing with lost artwork films were vital, if less glamorous, jobs than designing packaging for the latest symphony release.
The front cover and the overall booklet design and content had all remained much the same through the first decade. For Marco Polo, putting a picture of the composer on the front had been an obvious solution, though Heymann had quickly realised that this meant a lot of older men with beards. For Naxos, from the start, he had employed the simple solution of a painting or other artwork, finding these where he could. By 2000 Naxos was working more formally with standard picture libraries across the world, at closely negotiated rates because the volume was so high.
The range of releases had become so wide that to clarify the Naxos catalogue for consumers it had become necessary to create series. The variety only grew with time, and for each of the many labels and series (be it ‘Complete Piano Music of Liszt’, ‘Naxos World’, ‘Very Best of’, ‘Wind Band Classics’ or ‘Guitar Collection’) a design had to be created by Bromley and his production team. Sometimes the decision was to stay close to home with the white Naxos look, especially for the national labels such as ‘American Classics’ or ‘Spanish Classics’; sometimes, where the subject demanded a bolder approach, such as Film Music or Naxos Nostalgia, it was decided to break away from that framework. The system has remained the same for the last few years: each release has to be coordinated with the editors who are working on the sound files and will provide the track points and timings; and each release has to have its introductory ‘blurb’ for the back, written by marketing staff but overseen by Bromley. Naxos is still the only label in the industry to provide this basic information about each recording on the rear inlay card, something Heymann has considered essential. A cover image has to be chosen for each release, the notes commissioned (with translations where required) and edited, and all the basic information about the recording collated: venue, date, engineer, producer, editor and more. Naxos may have started as a popular budget label but it had its roots in Heymann’s personal interest as a collector – and collectors want this information.
Broadband Internet access has meant that the production team is international and largely freelance, working from home. In general one designer – in the UK, New Zealand, Italy, Hong Kong or Manila – will work on one release from start to finish. However, sometimes a cover may be created in Manila and the rest of the booklet designed in the UK. Designers with specialist classical interests are used whenever possible, and it is important that they are aware of diacritics on names: the international nature of the musicians and composers means that accuracy with Czech or Hungarian or Polish names is paramount.
Opera libretti and sung texts add another layer of complexity. For orchestral and instrumental releases the layout was very straightforward but for opera, lieder, chansons and other song releases, as well as sacred music, booklets burgeoned. It was up to Bromley’s department to source these texts and reproduce them – initially the sung language only but increasingly translations as well. There was no problem with out-of-copyright libretti, other than working with considerable amounts of texts in a variety of languages. However, there was often great difficulty with copyright owners who, accustomed to being paid handsomely by full-price labels, did not appreciate that the Naxos margins were slim. The aim was, and still is, to provide the best possible recordings for the price, but where negotiations failed more detailed synopses were commissioned instead.
Bromley has also overseen general style developments, including the introduction of a greater variety of fonts and other design elements. There has been an increasing use of full-bleed covers for particular repertoire and an introduction of slipcases for the most important releases, all to make those CDs stand out and appear more substantial, even within a Naxos white wall. The back inlay was redesigned, with a panel to enclose the recording details.
There are times when one recording is released in a number of different formats with slightly different specifications: the European release, the US release, the Far East release … It can be complicated because often each manufacturing plant has slightly different requirements in terms of measurements or layout. The designer looking after these various versions has to pay great attention to detail.
The growth of download sales and the drop in CD sales have also had an effect on design. A cover must now work in thumbnail size – with very clear titling – as well as look attractive on the shelf. Some titles are ‘pre-released’ in digital format before being put into the international CD release schedule, in which case there is a half-way design stage: a basic design is employed before the eventual CD cover design supersedes it.
Coordinating this is a considerable logistical enterprise. With designers and now note writers in many different countries, the Naxos production team works from a central FTP site that is accessed twenty-four hours a day. A decade of work is on that site, so that Naxos subsidiaries around the world can download a cover or notes if they are needed suddenly for a campaign. It has become a key resource.
Sixteen
Naxos on the Web
Developing the Digital Services
The Naxos presence on the Internet has been one of the most innovatory and effective parts of the company. It indicated as far back as 1996 that this was much more than a budget classical record company. Naxos was intent on providing a long-lasting and comprehensive classical music service; its purpose was, ultimately, to go far beyond the confines of one specific classical label. Heymann wanted to expand the reach of Naxos and make it a classical music provider in the richest and broadest sense, taking in audio, video and a wealth of other media: in short, a one-stop digital source of classical music.
Heymann is the first to admit that this wasn’t a clear strategy back in the mid-1990s when the Internet was beginning to make a serious impact. Living in Hong Kong, he was aware before most in the classical music world of the Internet’s growth; and when approached by his warehouse manager S.K. Wong, an amateur computer enthusiast, to set up the first site he responded positively. Initially he rejected Wong’s advice to register the domain names ‘naxos.com’ and ‘marcopolo.com’ and went ahead with just one website under the name of the parent company, ‘hnh.com’. It was a mistake that was later rectified. Nevertheless, in 1996 the fledgling hnh.com appeared with basic information about Naxos and Marco Polo. It was slow, simple and a bit confused. But it did stream one track of every new release in RealAudio and Heymann saw its potential.
By 1999 the website had been completely revamped: it was faster, with clearer information, and most importantly visitors could stream in Windows Media Audio (WMA) format any of the complete Naxos or Marco Polo albums. It was now called ‘naxos.com’. This was a real innovation
– the first site, classical or pop, to offer all its titles for listening online, track by track. It meant streaming, not downloading, but it brought music via the Internet directly into the home. The quality was basic, 20 kbps being the only realistic option in the dial-up era, but it was a huge step forward in classical marketing. In fact it was also a massive risk. Within the company, many distributors warned that this was a highly dangerous step. Piracy was already beginning to have an effect on pop. Surely, the doubters said, Heymann was inviting theft of his recordings. He did not agree. Firstly he saw it as an ideal marketing tool which would attract sales; secondly the quality was so low that although it was good enough for judging the performance, no real classical music lover would be content to have the music at that bitrate. In any case, Naxos CDs were cheap and Heymann did not believe that people would go to all the trouble of stealing the music (not easy to do at the time) when they could have the CD itself for a relatively small amount.
This bold step was to have far-reaching consequences. It put Naxos in the forefront of classical music presence on the web, and it meant that the company suddenly found itself with its own Internet department. In a growing number of rooms in the warehouse offices in Hong Kong, there were young and keen IT experts ripping CDs and creating digital files of the contents; and, just as importantly, musicologists compiling all the metadata (background information) required by the database that drove the website. What was being created was a digital source which, at the click of a mouse, would supply all information relating to all 2,500 CDs – including the notes. It was a remarkably prescient operation, and perhaps only possible because the company was based in Hong Kong, where computer technology was at the cutting edge.
The Story of Naxos Page 34