Naxos Blog

Naxos founder Klaus Heymann, born in 1936 in Frankfurt, attended his first concert as a nine-year-old in Tegernsee near Munich, where he and his mother had fled in the wake of Germany’s collapse after World War II.  Although he maintained a love of music throughout his early life, Mr. Heymann’s talents were more athletic—he was an excellent tennis player as a youth and served as a coach in Frankfurt—and, as a young adult, he began working for The Overseas Weekly, a newspaper for American servicemen. 

In 1967, Mr. Heymann moved to Hong Kong to open the Asian office of The Overseas Weekly; after completing his stint with the newspaper, he started his own mail order business for American GIs, offering cameras, watches—and audio equipment, including Bose speakers and Revox tape recorders.  After the Vietnam War ended, Mr. Heymann became the Hong Kong/China distributor for Bose and Revox products, as well as for Studer professional recording equipment; his company also started building professional recording studios in China and Southeast Asia.   

It was this career change—from newsman to salesman—that led Mr. Heymann back to classical music as a record distributor and impresario.  To boost sales of his audio equipment, Mr. Heymann sponsored classical music concerts; when his artists complained that their albums were unavailable in East Asia, he began distributing the labels on which they recorded.  He joined the board of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, helping to transform the Orchestra from an amateur group to a polished professional ensemble. 

In 1974, Mr. Heymann went to meet Takako Nishizaki, a violinist who had been hired by the Hong Kong Philharmonic to fill in as a soloist for a concert, at the Hong Kong’s Kai Tak airport; months later, Ms. Nishizaki would become his fiancée.  Mr. Heymann had promised Ms. Nishizaki’s father, a renowned violin teacher, that he would encourage his daughter’s development as a violinist.  To honor his vow in a city with such a small music scene, Mr. Heymann suggested that Ms. Nishizaki record the music of Fritz Kreisler (Ms. Nishizaki had won a scholarship to Juilliard established by the famous violinist).  Ms. Nishizaki went on to record over a dozen discs of Kreisler’s works and, in 1978, recorded the Butterfly Lovers Concerto, which Mr. Heymann released on his own label named HK.  That recording went on to sell remarkably well and the piece became Ms. Nishizaki’s signature work.  Later, Ms. Nishizaki recorded Vivaldi’s Four Seasons for Naxos, which became the top-selling disc in the label’s history and only one of 25 classical recordings to ever sell more than 1 million copies.     

The birth of Naxos occurred in 1987 when Mr. Heymann, as a favor to a friend, purchased 30 digital recordings.  At that time, CDs were the promising technology in the music industry and sold at retail for about $25; Mr. Heymann saw an opportunity to differentiate his discs by offering them at $6/unit, the same price as long-playing records (LPs).  Named for the Greek island where Dionysus, the god of wine and ecstasy, met Ariadne, Naxos became hugely popular in Asia and distributors around the world came calling.     

Naxos’s first-ever catalog, published in early 1988, contained a mere 61 titles of recordings from Orchestras and musicians based in such Eastern European countries as Czechoslovakia and Hungary.  Today, Naxos offers 5,500 albums—and adds 15-20 each month—featuring internationally-acclaimed musicians such as conductors Marin Alsop, Leonard Slatkin, and José Serebrier; orchestras such as the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, and the Baltimore Symphony; and chamber groups such as the Corigliano Quartet, Fine Arts Quartet, and Pacifica Quartet. In 2006, Naxos released 238 new recordings recorded in 29 different countries. 

Mr. Heymann and Ms. Nishizaki, his most trusted advisor and friend, still live in Hong Kong.  They have one son, Henryk, who currently works for Naxos.