Naxos (record label)

From Free net encyclopedia

Naxos Records is a record label specializing in budget-priced classical music CDs.

Founded in 1987 by Klaus Heymann, a German-born resident of Hong Kong, the label today is one of the biggest classical music labels, and has recently begun distributing DVDs as well. As of 2005, it is the largest-selling classical label in the world.

Naxos tries to avoid repertoire duplication. Compared to other major record labels, the Naxos selection may be shallower in terms of interpretations of a given masterwork. For example, the Naxos catalog has only three orchestral recordings of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, with the conductors Bela Drahos, Richard Edlinger and Richard Strauss (the last an historic recording), compared to Deutsche Grammophon, which has Abbado, Bernstein, Böhm, Karajan, Kleiber, and Thielemann, some of whom have recorded the piece on more than one occasion.

On the other hand, the selection of repertoire is very broad, including fringe repertoire such as the Symphonies of Nikolai Myaskovsky, much of contemporary classical music, and pieces by Johann Pachelbel other than his famous Canon in D. Its enterprise is seen in the selection of lesser recorded works like Japanese classical music, Jewish-American music, film music and early music.

In recent years the label has branched out into spoken-word audiobooks, SACDs and DVD-Audio, jazz and world music.

Naxos's aggressive pricing policies are one crucial factor prompting budget-line releases of other major classical record companies' earlier recordings.

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