Naxos comprises numerous companies, divisions, imprints, and labels specializing in
classical music
Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical music, as the term "classical music" also ...
but also
audiobooks
An audiobook (or a talking book) is a recording of a book or other work being read out loud. A reading of the complete text is described as "unabridged", while readings of shorter versions are abridgements.
Spoken audio has been available in sc ...
and other genres. The premier label is Naxos Records which focuses on classical music. Naxos Musical Group encompasses about 17 labels including Naxos Records, Naxos Audiobooks, and Naxos Books (ebooks). There are about an additional 50 labels that are independent of the Naxos Musical Group with a wide range of offerings.
The company was founded in 1987 by
Klaus Heymann
Klaus Heymann (born 22 October 1936) is a German entrepreneur and the founder and head of the Naxos Records, Naxos record label.
Biography and career
Heymann was born in Frankfurt, Germany, and studied Romance languages and English at the Univer ...
, a German-born resident of Hong Kong.
Naxos Records
Naxos Records is a record label specializing in
classical music
Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical music, as the term "classical music" also ...
. The company was known for its budget pricing of discs, with simpler artwork and design than most other labels. In the 1980s, Naxos primarily recorded central and eastern European symphony orchestras, often with lesser-known conductors, as well as upcoming and unknown musicians, to minimize recording costs and maintain its budget prices.
In more recent years, Naxos has taken advantage of the expiring
copyright
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...
s of other companies' studio recordings by selling discs remastered from
gramophone record
A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English), or simply a record, is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The groove usually starts nea ...
s. Examples include the complete recordings of opera singers such as
Enrico Caruso
Enrico Caruso (, , ; 25 February 1873 – 2 August 1921) was an Italian operatic first lyrical tenor then dramatic tenor. He sang to great acclaim at the major opera houses of Europe and the Americas, appearing in a wide variety of roles (74) ...
,
Amelita Galli-Curci
Amelita Galli-Curci (18 November 1882 – 26 November 1963) was an Italian coloratura soprano. She was one of the most popular operatic singers of the 20th century, with her recordings selling in large numbers.
Early life
She was born as A ...
, and
Titta Ruffo
Titta Ruffo (9 June 1877 – 5 July 1953), born as Ruffo Cafiero (double forename) Titta, was an Italian operatic baritone who had a major international singing career. Known as the "Voce del leone" ("voice of the lion"), he was greatly admi ...
and the 1934 world première performance of
Howard Hanson
Howard Harold Hanson (October 28, 1896 – February 26, 1981)''The New York Times'' – Obituaries. Harold C. Schonberg. February 28, 1981 p. 1011/ref> was an American composer, conductor, educator, music theorist, and champion of American class ...
's opera ''
Merry Mount''. Legal restrictions prevented some of these recordings from being sold in the United States. Naxos has also recorded the music of contemporary composers, including
Leonardo Balada
Leonardo Balada Ibáñez (born September 22, 1933) is a Catalan American classical composer, who is noted for his operas and orchestral works.
Life
Balada was born in Barcelona, Spain. After studying piano at the Conservatori Superior de Mús ...
,
Bechara El-Khoury
Bechara El Khoury ( ar, بشارة خليل الخوري; 10 August 1890 – 11 January 1964) was a Lebanese politician who served as the 1st president of Lebanon, holding office from 21 September 1943 to 18 September 1952, apart from an 11-day ...
,
Laurent Petitgirard
Laurent Petitgirard (born 10 June 1950, in Paris) is a French classical composer and conductor.
Biography and career
Laurent Petitgirard studied piano with Serge Petitgirard and composition with Alain Kremski. He has worked as conductor with do ...
, and
Alla Pavlova
Alla Pavlova (Russian: ''Алла Павлова'', born July 13, 1952 in Ukraine) is a Russian composer, born and initially raised in Vinnitsa in Ukraine. She and her family moved to Moscow in 1961, and she then moved to Brooklyn, New York in 199 ...
. The label has branched out into
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
,
world music, and books on musical subjects. Naxos Spoken Word Library contains non-music products, such as
audiobook
An audiobook (or a talking book) is a recording of a book or other work being read out loud. A reading of the complete text is described as "unabridged", while readings of shorter versions are abridgements.
Spoken audio has been available in sc ...
s and
radio drama
Radio drama (or audio drama, audio play, radio play, radio theatre, or audio theatre) is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine ...
s.
Since the 1990s, Naxos has recorded with British and American orchestras, such as the
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (BSO) is an English orchestra, founded in 1893 and originally based in Bournemouth. With a remit to serve the South and South West of England, the BSO is administratively based in the adjacent town of Poole, s ...
, the
Seattle Symphony
The Seattle Symphony is an American orchestra based in Seattle, Washington. Since 1998, the orchestra is resident at Benaroya Hall. The orchestra also serves as the accompanying orchestra for the Seattle Opera.
History
Beginnings
The orchestra ...
, the
Buffalo Philharmonic
The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra is an American symphony orchestra located in Buffalo, New York led by Music Director JoAnn Faletta. Its primary performing venue is Kleinhans Music Hall, which is a National Historic Landmark. Each season it ...
, and the
Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra
The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra (MSO) is an American symphony orchestra based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The orchestra performs primarily at the Bradley Symphony Center in Allen-Bradley Hall. The orchestra also serves as the orchestra for Florentine ...
.
The company produces
Super Audio CD
Super Audio CD (SACD) is an optical disc format for audio storage introduced in 1999. It was developed jointly by Sony and Philips Electronics and intended to be the successor to the Compact Disc (CD) format.
The SACD format allows multiple aud ...
s,
DVD-Audio
DVD-Audio (commonly abbreviated as DVD-A) is a digital format for delivering high-fidelity audio content on a DVD. DVD-Audio uses most of the storage on the disc for high-quality audio and is not intended to be a video delivery format.
The sta ...
, and
Blu-ray
The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of sto ...
s.
In 2003, it began a paid subscription service for listening on the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
that offers its complete catalogue and the Naxos Music Library. As of 2019, subscribers had access to 2,225,190 tracks on its 145,755 discs, though these numbers were increasing by nearly 100 new discs a day. In 2015, it launched a high-definition download and streaming service, ClassicsOnline HD•LL, with a catalogue drawn from a number of classical record labels.
Business model
Naxos generally avoids repertoire duplication. Because of that, its classical repertoire has broadened to include fringe works, such as the symphonies of
Nikolai Myaskovsky
Nikolai Yakovlevich Myaskovsky or Miaskovsky or Miaskowsky (russian: Никола́й Я́ковлевич Мяско́вский; pl, Mikołaj Miąskowski, syn Jakóbowy; 20 April 18818 August 1950), was a Russian and Soviet composer. He is som ...
,
contemporary classical music
Contemporary classical music is classical music composed close to the present day. At the beginning of the 21st century, it commonly referred to the post-1945 modern forms of post-tonal music after the death of Anton Webern, and included seria ...
, and the works of lesser-known composers, such as
Alexander Glazunov
Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov; ger, Glasunow (, 10 August 1865 – 21 March 1936) was a Russian composer, music teacher, and conductor of the late Russian Romantic period. He was director of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory between 1905 ...
,
Johann Nepomuk Hummel
Johann Nepomuk Hummel (14 November 177817 October 1837) was an Austrian composer and virtuoso pianist. His music reflects the Transition from Classical to Romantic music, transition from the Classical period (music), Classical to the Romantic ...
,
Ferdinand Ries
Ferdinand Ries (baptised 28 November 1784 – 13 January 1838) was a German composer. Ries was a friend, pupil and secretary of Ludwig van Beethoven. He composed eight symphonies, a violin concerto, nine piano concertos (the first concerto ...
and
Louis Spohr
Louis Spohr (, 5 April 178422 October 1859), baptized Ludewig Spohr, later often in the modern German form of the name Ludwig, was a German composer, violinist and conductor. Highly regarded during his lifetime, Spohr composed ten symphonies, ...
. It has produced a series of little-recorded works, such as the American Classics series, Canadian Classics series, Japanese classical music, Jewish-American music,
wind band music,
film music
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film. The score comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to e ...
, and
early music
Early music generally comprises Medieval music (500–1400) and Renaissance music (1400–1600), but can also include Baroque music (1600–1750). Originating in Europe, early music is a broad musical era for the beginning of Western classical m ...
, many of which are première recordings.
Distribution
Naxos Global Logistics, based in
Poing near
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...
, was founded in 2008 to expand the services offered to its distributed labels, including manufacturing, marketing, and licensing.
Awards
In 2005, Naxos won the Label of the Year Award
at Classic FM/''
Gramophone
A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...
'' awards.
Other divisions
*
ARC Music
ARC Music is a world music and folk music label based in West Sussex, England, that was established in 1976. Naxos acquired ARC in 2019.
Film and television
ARC Music has been used in the films ''Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crysta ...
*
ArkivMusic
ArkivMusic, Inc. is a Tennessee-based online classical music retailer, specializing in the distribution of CDs and DVDs.
ArkivMusic opened its online store in February 2002.
In addition to their inventory of readily available CDs, the ArkivCD r ...
*
Capriccio
*
Dynamic
Dynamics (from Greek δυναμικός ''dynamikos'' "powerful", from δύναμις ''dynamis'' "power") or dynamic may refer to:
Physics and engineering
* Dynamics (mechanics)
** Aerodynamics, the study of the motion of air
** Analytical dynam ...
*
Oehms Classics
Oehms Classics is a German classical music label founded in 2003 by Dieter Oehms (born in Manderscheid, Bernkastel-Wittlich in 1941), a former manager for 35 years with DGG/Polygram and Arte Nova
Arte (; (), sometimes stylized in lowercase ...
*
Ondine
*
Orfeo
Orfeo Classic Schallplatten und Musikfilm GmbH of Munich was a German independent classical record label founded in 1979 by Axel Mehrle and launched in 1980. It has been owned by Naxos since 2015.
History
The Orfeo music label was registered ...
See also
*
List of record labels
File:Alvinoreyguitarboogie.jpg
File:AmMusicBunk78.jpg
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Lists of record labels cover record labels, brands or trademarks associated with marketing of music recordings and music videos. The lists are organized alphabetically, b ...
* ''
Capitol Records v. Naxos of America'', 2005 NY Slip Op 02570, 4 NY3d 540 (NY April 5, 2005)
References
External links
*
Capitol Records, Inc. v. Naxos of America, Inc. legal case{{Authority control
Classical music record labels
Jazz record labels
Hong Kong independent record labels
IFPI members
Record label distributors
Record labels established in 1987
Audiobook companies and organizations