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24-549: The company was founded in 1987 by Klaus Heymann , a German-born resident of Hong Kong. Naxos Records is a record label specializing in classical music . 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

48-545: A 2-LP set entitled Nativity . Many of its recordings were later issued on CD and saw great success with its series of budget-price Vox Boxes. The company has continued a program of new releases, too, by such orchestras as the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra . In 1978, the label was acquired by Moss Music Group and later managed for years by Mark Jenkins of Countdown Media. In 2018, the Vox label group

72-421: A healthy, profitable existence." He also created distribution companies in most major music markets to distribute Naxos recordings, and the group of companies is now a major distributor of classical recordings and classical music DVDs around the world, including those of Warner Classics and Sony . Heymann claimed, in a 2007 interview with Stereophile Magazine, that he was only just making a "decent return" from

96-616: The Internet 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. Naxos Global Logistics, based in Poing near Munich ,

120-983: The Chinese Butterfly Lovers' Violin Concerto with the Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra . Since 1978, it sold several hundred thousand copies legitimately and millions in China. After this unexpected success, Heymann created a label called HK to record other works with the Hong Kong Philharmonic and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra . At the same time, he began to import and license music from pop labels such as RCA , Arista , Virgin Records , Chrysalis Records and others. While Heymann

144-618: The Classical Record Industry , published by Penguin, which led to the UK publisher pulping all copies of the book. Vox Records Vox Records is a budget classical record label . The name is Latin for "voice." Some Vox releases such as Peter Frankl 's Debussy Piano Works and György Sándor 's Complete Prokofiev Sonatas were reissued in premium vinyl boxsets by the audiophile German FSM Records Hamburg. The Brendel Complete Beethoven Sonatas were remastered from

168-770: The Excelsior label. Although Vox specializes in imported recordings, it has also recorded the Utah Symphony Orchestra under Maurice Abravanel , the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra under Leonard Slatkin and Walter Susskind , the Minnesota Orchestra under Stanisław Skrowaczewski , and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra under Thomas Schippers , Walter Susskind and Michael Gielen . In

192-482: The United States. Naxos has also recorded the music of contemporary composers, including Leonardo Balada , Bechara El-Khoury , Laurent Petitgirard , and Alla Pavlova . The label has branched out into jazz , world music , and books on musical subjects. Naxos Spoken Word Library contains non-music products, such as audiobooks and radio dramas . In 2003, it began a paid subscription service for listening on

216-563: The complete symphonies and orchestral music of Rachmaninoff ; rarely heard orchestral music by Tchaikovsky, Massenet , and Rimsky-Korsakov ; the complete orchestral music of the French composer Erik Satie ; and one of the most complete collections of the music of the early American composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk . Vox maintained several subsidiary labels including Turnabout and Candide. Both labels generally focused on contemporary music. In recent years, select Vox recordings were rereleased on

240-583: The early 1970s, Vox and its subsidiaries issued a number of compatible quadraphonic / stereophonic recordings using the Sansui QS quadraphonic matrix system; some of the ambience can still be heard when the CD versions are played with an amplifier with Dolby decoding and four speakers. One of these was the first album made by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, led by Robert Shaw ,

264-698: The end of the war in Vietnam, Heymann became the Hong Kong distributor for Bose and Revox, and, later, Studer recording studio equipment. He began organizing classical music concerts to help boost the sales of the brands he sold. When Heymann found that many of the musicians who performed at these concerts could not find their recordings in Hong Kong record shops, he started importing a number of classical record labels, including Vox -Turnabout, Hungaroton , Supraphon and Opus Records , for his company Studer-Revox (Hong Kong) to be later renamed Pacific Music. Heymann

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288-399: The expiring copyrights of other companies' studio recordings by selling discs remastered from gramophone records . Examples include the complete recordings of opera singers such as Enrico Caruso , Amelita Galli-Curci , and Titta Ruffo and the 1934 world première performance of Howard Hanson 's opera Merry Mount . Legal restrictions prevented some of these recordings from being sold in

312-819: The founder and head of the Naxos record label. Heymann was born in Frankfurt , Germany , and studied Romance languages and English at the Universities of Frankfurt and Lisbon , at King's College London and finally at the Sorbonne in Paris. To pay his way through university, he worked as a tennis coach. Heymann worked in advertising sales and special supplement production for an American newspaper in his native Frankfurt, then worked in international marketing for Braun AG . He first went to Hong Kong in 1967 to start up

336-452: The goal of selling budget-priced classical CDs. His goal was to sell CDs at the same price as LPs, or roughly one-third of the price of CDs at the time. At first, he was acquiring digital recordings from a German company. Then, Naxos began developing its catalog with young or unknown artists and orchestras. Heymann assumed the Naxos catalog would not cover more than fifty releases, thinking that

360-419: The major labels would begin competing in the same sector, but given the success of the label, the company went on to become a full-fledged classical label covering a wide range of music. Over the years, Heymann led the label to not only record the standard classical repertoire, but also to focus on works that were not often recorded, or not at all. The company is "still filling gaps in the repertoire." Heymann

384-401: The more than $ 80 million he invested in the company, "thanks to the advent of digital platforms." He sees the future of the classical music market as a mix of CDs, downloads and streaming: "Whether physical product will be a half of today or a third of today, nobody knows. There will also be downloads, and all kinds of subscription things. Our streaming classical-music library right now is by far

408-546: The most successful in our field, and the most profitable for us and for the labels. But there may be others that mix paid and unpaid streaming ." Heymann's strategy is to be "the last man standing in terms of distributing classical music in physical form." Heymann is also the co-founder of Artaria Editions, a music-publishing house with a specialist interest in rare eighteenth-century repertoire. In March 2024, Heymann personally acquired Chandos Records . The announcement mentioned that there would be no immediate changes among

432-799: The office of the Overseas Weekly , the American newspaper he had worked for in Frankfurt. He "arrived with a suitcase and a typewriter, and strangely enough the hotel which had been booked for me didn't exist anymore." He subsequently created a direct-mail advertising business, then a mail-order company providing goods to members of the United States military in Vietnam . He sold such items as cameras, watches and audio equipment, including Bose speakers and Revox tape recorders. Following

456-552: The original tapes for SACD and for HD downloads. Vox was founded in 1945 in New York by George Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, a Hungarian Jewish immigrant. Starting out with 78-rpm discs, it specialized in licensed pressings of European classical recordings. It was one of the last major recording companies to adopt stereo recording, about 1957. The company's output featured the "Vox Box", compilations of music by specific composers, such as piano music of Chopin , Tchaikovsky , and Ravel ;

480-548: The people managing Chandos Records, which will continue to operate independently and under the same name, but worldwide distribution of physical and digital Chandos products will be handled by the Naxos Music Group. Heymann lives in Hong Kong with his wife Takako Nishizaki and their son Henryk. In 2007, Heymann successfully sued music critic Norman Lebrecht for defamation, for a book entitled Maestros, Masterpieces and Madness: The Secret Life and Shameful Death of

504-415: Was asked to join the board of the then-amateur Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra in 1973, and helped this orchestra become a full-time professional orchestra in 1974. At this time, he also met his future wife, Japanese violinist Takako Nishizaki , who came to play as soloist with the Hong Kong Philharmonic. Heymann's desire to help his wife's career led him to start making her recordings, including that of

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528-603: Was founded in 2008 to expand the services offered to its distributed labels, including manufacturing, marketing, and licensing. In 2005, Naxos won the Label of the Year Award at Classic FM/ Gramophone awards. In 2023, they won the Label of the Year Award at the International Classical Music Awards. Klaus Heymann Klaus Heymann (born 22 October 1936) is a German entrepreneur and

552-451: Was one of the early proponents of digital music and led Naxos to put its entire catalog online for streaming in 1996 via hnh.com that became naxos.com. In 2002, he launched the Naxos Music Library, essentially used by educational institutions and libraries. In 2007, Heymann stated that "the label was positioned to survive and prosper without selling CDs," and that "revenue from other sources is now big enough to let us not only survive but lead

576-589: Was successful selling records of Asian music, he wanted to record rare works, and decided to create the Marco Polo label to do this. After initially recording in Hong Kong and Singapore, Heymann switched to eastern European countries, profiting from his connections with the Hungaroton and Opus labels, located in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, which he distributed. In 1987, Heymann founded the Naxos label, with

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