Tomorrow, my work here at Naxos of America will be done and I’ll no longer be writing for The Naxos Blog at Sequenza21. Writing this blog over the last year has been a highlight of my time here and I thank all who regularly contributed comments.

My departure from Naxos doesn’t mean that the blog will be gone, though: Paula Mlyn, the new publicist, will be taking over. Paula, herself a composer, will no doubt be spending much more time on contemporary music than I and I know those who read The Naxos Blog will enjoy her insight into this part of the classical music world.

As almost everyone knows by now, Amazon.com has opened its digital download store; of course, Naxos has a strong presence in the classical section. All American Classics titles are up for $5.99/album with individual tracks selling at $.89. Other Naxos recordings are selling for $7.99 for an album download.

Remember: you can still find Naxos CDs for the same price. J&R is selling Naxos discs online at $5.99, as is Arkivmusic.

Naxos founder Klaus Heymann will be signing autographs and answering questions at J&R Music–and Computer!–World in downtown New York City on Tuesday, September 25th at 12:30 pm. Joining him will be Philippe Quint, who’s releasing a disc of solo music by Miklos Rozsa on Naxos the same day, and conductor JoAnn Falletta, another acclaimed Naxos artist.

Come chew the fat with the man who has, over the last 20 years, turned his Hong Kong-based CD label into an international music-based multimedia phenomenon and changed the way classical music gets recorded and distributed.

You can learn more about the event at J&R’s blog, Real New Yorkers Know (www.rnyk.com). J&R is located at 23 Park Row, accross from City Hall Park in Manhattan.

Naxos of America is now the U. S. distributor of Canadian classical music label ATMA Classique.

ATMA Classique (atmaclassique.com)–which, over the last dozen years, has built a catalogue of more than 250 releases–is a unique label with a truly international focus in terms of repertoire and artists. As founder and producer Johanne Goyette explains, “it’s a Canadian label that is Montreal based, but I don’t want it to be solely about Montreal. We are part of the global village. There are many artists on ATMA who tour internationally and bring musicians from other countries on to our recordings.” As a result, many of the label’s projects are perfect examples of artistic cross-pollination between artists from different countries and cultures.

The Danish national label Dacapo, which Naxos of America distributes, has been putting out recordings by Denmark’s composers and performers since 1989. Lately, critics here in the US have been paying attention to releases of music by Carl Nielsen and Rued Langgaard, two composers from the first part of the century that took different musical paths.

Nielsen, who enjoyed privileged status as part of the musical establishment in Copenhagen, adopted a tight, neo-classical style as his career advanced. Dacapo, which already has a complete set of his symphonies in its catalogue, released an album of short orchestral works which David Hurwitz of ClassicsToday.com called a “slam-dunk.” Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times described the first volume of Dacapo’s complete set of Nielsen’s string quartets as “youthful and elegant.”

Langgaard (1893-1952), the son of professional musicians, was widely regarded by contemporaries as highly eccentric–he probably would have called himself highly spiritual–and his music, particularly his later works are unorthodox but full of varied orchestral color.

Steve Smith, writing for The New York Times, discusses Langgaard’s distinct brand of musical mysticism in a review, which appeared last weekend, of two Dacapo releases of the composer’s symphonies (his Second and Third on one album; Numbers 12-14 on the other) with Thomas Dausgaard and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra. This same ensemble also appears on the DVD and CD versions of Langgaard’s opera Antikrist.

On September 25th, Naxos will release the final installment of a complete cycle of Brahms’s Symphonies featuring Marin Alsop and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, with a new recording of Symphony No. 4 and Hungarian Dances Nos. 2 and 4-9, arranged by Peter Breiner for Naxos.

Alsop’s recording of Brahms’s Symphony No. 3 with the London Philharmonic met with significant praise, with such critics as Tim Smith of the Baltimore Sun calling it “glowing music-making, rich in character and atmosphere.”

The first two releases also received acclaim. Adam Baer of the Los Angeles Times described Alsop’s Symphony No. 1 as “Brahms that flows and sings” while Steve Smith of TimeOut New York praised her Symphony No. 2 as “a gorgeous efflorescence . . . The results do conductor and ensemble proud.”

Alsop begins her tenure as Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony on September 28th and is the first woman to head a major American orchestra. She was also a MacArthur Fellow, the first conductor ever to receive this award, and was the first musician to win both Gramophone’s “Artist of the Year” and the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Conductor’s Award in the same season.

For more information, please contact Mark Berry at mberry [at] naxosusa [dot] com.