Updates from the world's leading classical music label
For composers, July holds two main sources of inspiration, being both the warmest summer month in the Northern Hemisphere and that which marks the occasion of America’s Fourth of July, or Independence Day. I’ve chosen seven pieces that reflect this, a number of which may be new to many and, I hope, an interesting discovery. Read More …
The date of posting this blog marks the anniversary of the premiere of a difficult-to-categorise stage work, and the anniversary of its world premiere complete recording. Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims (The Trip to Reims) was first presented to the public on 19 June 1825. Naxos introduced the first recording of the complete work to Read More …
Many of us are currently gorging on recordings of Beethoven’s music, with this year marking the 250th anniversary of his birth. If you’d like a brief change in anniversary diet, however, then read on. 2020 also marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of the English poet, William Wordsworth (1770-1850). We’ll take a three-pronged approach Read More …
Six centuries. Ten composers. One text. This week’s blog is a journey that savours the flavours of settings of Gloria in excelsis Deo (Glory to God in the highest), the opening text of the Gloria section of music that has been written for use during the celebration of the Mass in churches down the ages. Read More …
As I write this blog, I’m in a lock-down situation in London arising from the Covid-19 epidemic. What was planned as a quick 7-day visit to the capital has turned into a longer-term relationship, since my home base of Thailand has pulled up the drawbridge against returning travellers such as myself. I’m staying in a Read More …
I was on a plane a few months ago during which the choice of in-flight viewing didn’t immediately excite, but my eye was caught by a film about Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968). Naxos and its affiliated labels have released numerous recordings of the composer’s works which, to be honest, I find much more engaging than I Read More …
April Fool’s Day occurs each year on 1 April and although the day has been marked for many centuries in different cultures, its exact origin is difficult to pin down. One speculation links it to the move by France in 1582 to move from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, effectively moving the start of Read More …
March 21 marks the European Day of Early Music. By way of a slightly contorted response to the occasion, I thought we might take a look at William Shakespeare’s influence on composers, not through the contemporary contributions they made to performances of his plays (he lived from 1564 to 1616), but by taking stock of Read More …
You have to pity those composers who got air-brushed out of the limelight during their time for no other reason than they were contemporaries of the acknowledged masters, and so had to live under the long shadows of composers such as Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and so on. Or, at least, it seems to us that Read More …
Naxos has travelled far since its founding in 1987 as a budget label with a compelling business model, a chairman of great foresight and a DNA oozing innovation. It has developed into a web of avenues that link art music with music lovers. The Naxos label is now just one of the constituents of the Read More …