It was the mid-1980s when German-born, Hong Kong-based entrepreneur Klaus Heymann had an idea for his Hong Kong electronics company: organize classical music concerts to show off the equipment.
In the process, he discovered that many of the visiting artists' records could not be found in Hong Kong, so he added music distribution to his repertoire. Heymann's recording career began when he married famed violinist Takako Nishizaki, and recorded her performing the Butterfly Lovers' Violin Concerto, which sold hundreds of thousands of copies across Asia.
Now 25 years later, Naxos is the largest classical music label and distributor in the world, and one known for its inventive approach to everything from choosing artists to pricing products, and for jumping into the digital age with both feet.
In Concert host Paolo Pietropaolo sat down with Heymann to talk about the past and future of classical music recording, and discovered why Heymann thinks orchestras should sometimes play in jeans and T-shirts, why having no background in music or the recording industry led to his success and which one recording he would save if all his digital files were about to be lost.
We hear a lot about how classical music audiences are aging, how young people aren’t developing an interest and how the classical concert experience is dying. Do the same concerns enter into the world of classical music recording?
I don’t think young audiences necessarily dislike classical music; what they dislike is the formal etiquette of the traditional symphony concerts. Online, a lot of young people listen to classical music — and young audiences become familiar with the sound of symphony orchestras through things like video games. The Naxos music library is directed at universities and music schools, and among the 15 million potential users, the majority is below 24 years old, so we have actually increased listenership among young people.
What we have to do now is get those young people into concerts and into opera houses — and orchestras have to do more to make concerts attractive to young people. Why do the musicians have to wear tuxedos and all this formal attire? Why can’t they play for young people in jeans and T-shirts? If I just want to listen passively to music, I can do it at home. I can watch the Berlin Philharmonic digital concert hall in high definition surround sound in my home. Why go to a concert hall unless something is happening there?
Do you have those kinds of conversations with leaders of orchestras and encourage them to move in those kinds of directions?
I do, but there are conflicting forces at play. There are the boards, which very often consist of elderly people who want the traditional overtures, concertos and symphonies with no clapping between movements and no clapping during the music. There are the musician unions who don’t want any change, and don’t want to go outside the concert hall to teach underprivileged children in schools. And then there are the reformers, who realize things have to change if orchestras are to survive. So it’s not going to happen overnight, but it will have to happen because otherwise the whole thing will collapse.
You don’t seem to think it is going to collapse. If you look into your crystal ball, what is the next major change in the classical music industry?
I don’t think the industry will collapse, so long as it keeps adapting. Many recordings will still be produced and more and more recordings will become available. Just imagine: CBC probably has 50,000 or 100,000 hours of music in the archives, and you’re not the only public broadcaster. There’s West German Radio, the BBC, Swedish Radio. If all that stuff is put online, you’re eventually going to have a million recordings for people to listen to. So in the future, the biggest challenge will be how to access that enormous mass of music online, how to find what you’re looking for, and if you’re a record company, how to make people listen to your stuff versus the music that will be available online. Whoever has the best search engine, and the best recommendation engine, will survive. The others will fall by the wayside.
So there will be a lot more employment opportunities for musicologists [laughs].
And for IT people developing search engines and developing recommendations engines, things like that. But that’s only the start.
You once said, “When I am asked the secret of my success, I reply 1. I didn’t read music; 2. I didn’t play an instrument; 3. I hadn’t worked for a record label.” Why is that the secret to your success?
First of all, I don’t have any preconceived ideas about whom we should record. When an artist comes to us and wants to make a recording for Naxos, I tell them to send me a recent live recording of a concert. Then I go to our listening room with my wife, the violinist Takako Nishizaki, and she says, “Who is it?” But I won’t tell, and I say, “Just tell me, on a scale of one to 100, how good is that artist or that orchestra.” And that is how we select new artists, on the quality of the music-making.
And not having worked for a record company means I didn’t have any preconceived ideas of how we should run the business. So when we first started making recordings, my contracts specified all rights in perpetuity, and for all formats now known or to be developed in future. That’s why we were the first label on iTunes, because we had all the rights from the artists. So that’s why not having worked for another record company, but having run other successful businesses, is one of the key ingredients of my success.
It’s an amazing story and an amazing company, but I’m going to leave you with one last question: Imagine your computer is about to crash permanently and you only have enough time to save one audio file from the entire Naxos classical music library. Which recording would you choose?
I would choose a recording of the Butterfly Lovers' Violin Concerto, because my wife has played that piece more than 100 times, and has made seven recordings of it. I love the piece and I love her playing.
ListenIn honour of Naxos's 25th anniversary, here is Butterfly Lovers' Violin Concerto, in full.
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