advertisement


Good classical labels

Eoin

Eoin

pfm Member
Or,

‘Are Naxos good?’

Getting back into CDs with a Dac purchase suddenly they’re sounding good. I do find myself attracted to the Naxos range often, they’ve often different stuff.

They’re on the budget end, so how do we feel Naxos stack up for sound and performance quality normally?

Or would I be better collecting elsewhere?
 
With classical music in particular, more often than not there is either a definitive performance, or 2 - 3 different interpretations, that are streets ahead of other versions. The label isn't generally the determining factor in this - I can think of several Naxos recordings that are genuinely excellent, and others that have turned out to be disappointing. I built up most of my library when CDs were the dominant medium for recorded music, but have progressively listened to the radio more than collect CDs for a variety of reasons. That's even easier now that most classical music stations broadcast through the internet, but I guess that having a subscription to something like Tidal or Qobuz would now be a good means of discovering music, and the interpretations that you like.
 
Eoin said:
Or,

‘Are Naxos good?’

Getting back into CDs with a Dac purchase suddenly they’re sounding good. I do find myself attracted to the Naxos range often, they’ve often different stuff.

They’re on the budget end, so how do we feel Naxos stack up for sound and performance quality normally?

Or would I be better collecting elsewhere?
Click to expand...

In early music Naxos are excellent. I think part of the reason is that they are a vehicle for so called vanity publishing, specialist musicians, often academics, who love a work and who just want to put their ideas about how to perform it on record do deals with Naxos to get the music recorded and released. I’m thinking about artists like Glen Wilson and Lucy van Dael and Elizabeth Farr and Wolfgang Rübsam and Julia Brown and The Rose Consort and Tonus Pregrinus. All these people have produced excellent interpretations, some much more than excellent.

They also made some outstanding choices about music to relicence. I’m thinking of Sergio Vartolo especially.

They may have released some interesting contemporary music too, especially American and British - I say that because I’ve been really enjoying their release of Rochberg’s Circles of Fire, the Peter Maxwell Davies Quartets and Bobby Mitchell’s Rzewski CD.

In music written between 1750 and 1950 - which admittedly I listen to much less - I would single out Jeno Jando’s Liszt and Bartok, Idl Biret’s Schoenberg and Beethoven/Liszt, Hakon Austbo’s Debussy and Messiaen and Scriabin.

They had an initiative of producing remasters of early recordings, and many of them are wonderful. Things like the Rachmaninov performances of Chopin, and the Ignaz Friedman. They chose top engineers. I think it’s called Naxos Historicals.

There’s probably loads of other things - Tintner’s recordings for example. And the recording of Beethoven’s dances by Capella Istropolitana. And I was forgetting one of their most impressive achievements - a major high point without a doubt - Tom Beghin’s Haydn.

Sound is mostly fine. There are some unsatisfactory sound takes - Glen Wilson’s Louis Couperin is a clear example, but mostly it’s fine.
 
Last edited:
Naxos is good. One can often find better recordings of core rep on other labels, but for non-core rep, with its vast catalog, Naxos is very fine. Performance standards on the label are good and recording quality from ~late 90s on is at the same level as any other label. Naxos does release some recordings by some extraordinary artists (eg, Kotaro Fukuma), so one can engage in treasure hunting with some soloists.
 
I've been enjoying quite a few of Naxos American and Canadian classics, would particularly single out the Vivian Fung disc that Todd A wrote about a couple of years ago which is excellent.

But the two labels I'd really recommend for both interesting rare, and core repertoire, sound quality and excellent artists are BIS and Hyperion.
 
Thumbs up to Naxos for early music and BIS for later music. Ondine particularly, Hyperion and Pentatone are usually reliable but I mainly buy classical SACDs.
 
Should have added that anything Antoni Wit on Naxos - Lutoslawski, Penderecki - is excellent.
 
His Alpine is very long. I do like it for the detail but it’s a bit placid. I recently discovered the Kord which is a good foil. The Gorecki is great.
 
In addition to the fine companies already mentioned, Harmonica Mundi has masses of good stuff.

Most publishers these days outside the corporate monsters like Universal were started by people who were passionate about recorded music (they weren’t doing it to get very rich) and they work hard to develop and maintain some areas of speciality and excellence.
 
Some good stuff on Oehms Classic and Tudor, Teldec too but they belong to Warner now.
 
I like Channel Classics and Praga Digitals for Chamber music. Used to have a lot of their SACDs, all now ripped to HDD.
 
For rarely recorded Vaughan Williams and re-issues of classic old recordings Albion Records do excellent work.

They are the recording arm of the Vaughan Williams society so quite specialist.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top