Naxos comprises numerous companies, divisions, imprints and labels specializing in classical music but also audiobooks and other genres. The premier label is Naxos Records which focuses on classical music. Naxos Musical Group encompasses about 17 labels including Naxos Records, Naxos Audiobooks and Naxos Books (ebooks). There are about an additional 50 labels that are independent of the Naxos Musical Group with a wide range of offerings.
Dame Mitsuko Uchida, DBE is a classical pianist and conductor, born in Japan and naturalised in Britain, particularly noted for her interpretations of Mozart and Schubert.
Marin Alsop ['mɛər.ɪn 'æːl.sɑːp] is an American conductor and violinist. She is currently music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and chief conductor of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. In 2020 she was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
The Tallis Scholars is a British professional early music vocal ensemble normally consisting of two singers per part, with a core group of ten singers. They specialise in performing a cappella sacred vocal music.
Vernon George "Tod" Handley CBE was a British conductor, known in particular for his support of British composers. He was born of a Welsh father and an Irish mother into a musical family in Enfield, Middlesex. He acquired the nickname "Tod" because his feet were turned in at his birth, which his father simply summarised: "They toddle". Handley preferred the use of the name "Tod" throughout his life over his given names.
Gramophone is a magazine published monthly in London devoted to classical music, particularly to reviews of recordings. It was founded in 1923 by the Scottish author Compton Mackenzie. It was acquired by Haymarket in 1999. In 2013 the Mark Allen Group became the publisher.
Joyce Hilda Hatto was an English concert pianist and piano teacher. In 1956 she married William Barrington-Coupe, a record producer who was convicted of Purchase Tax evasion in 1966. Hatto became famous very late in life when unauthorised copies of commercial recordings made by other pianists were released under her name, earning her high praise from critics. The fraud did not come to light until 2007, more than six months after her death.
The Quintet in A minor for Piano and String Quartet, Op. 84 is a chamber work by Edward Elgar.
Diapason is a monthly magazine, published in French by Italian media group Mondadori. The magazine focuses on classical music, especially classical music recordings and hi-fi. The magazine was created by Georges Chérière in Angers, France under the title Diapason donne le ton dans l'Ouest and the first issue was published in Paris, 1956.
The first recording of Edward Elgar's Symphony No 1 was made by the London Symphony Orchestra in 1930, conducted by the composer for His Master's Voice. The recording was reissued on long-playing record (LP) in 1970, and on compact disc in 1992 as part of EMI's "Elgar Edition" of all the composer's electrical recordings of his works.
The first complete recording of Gustav Mahler's Eighth Symphony was made on 9 April 1950, with Leopold Stokowski conducting the New York Philharmonic and combined New York choirs. The recording was of a live performance at the Carnegie Hall. Nearly two years earlier the Hungarian-born conductor Eugene Ormandy had recorded the "Veni Creator Spiritus" movement, with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra in a performance at the Hollywood Bowl in July 1948. Since Stokowski's version at least 70 recordings of the symphony have been made, by many of the world's leading orchestras and singers, mostly during live performances. This number includes recordings which were for private or limited distribution and were not issued under commercial record labels.
These lists show the audio and visual recordings of the opera L'Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi. The opera was first performed in Mantua in 1607, at the court of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga, and is one of the earliest of all operas. The first recording of L'Orfeo was issued in 1939, a freely adapted version of Monteverdi's music edited by Giacomo Benvenuti, given by the orchestra of La Scala Milan conducted by Ferrucio Calusio. In 1949 the Berlin Radio Orchestra under Helmut Koch recorded the complete opera, on long-playing records (LPs). The advent of LP recordings was, as Harold Schonberg later wrote, an important factor in the postwar revival of interest in Renaissance and Baroque music, and from the mid-1950s recordings of L'Orfeo have been issued on many labels. Koch's landmark version was reissued in 1962, when it was compared unfavourably with others that had by then been issued. The 1969 recording by Nicholas Harnoncourt and the Vienna Concentus Musicus, using Harnoncourt's edition based on period instruments, was praised for "making Monteverdi's music sound something like the way he imagined". In 1981 Siegfried Heinrich, with the Early Music Studio of the Hesse Chamber Orchestra, recorded a version which re-created the original Striggio libretto ending, adding music from Monteverdi's 1616 ballet Tirsi e Clori for the Bacchante scenes. Among more recent recordings, that of Emmanuelle Haïm has been praised for its dramatic effect. The 21st century has seen the issue of an increasing number of recordings on DVD.
The Dream of Gerontius, Edward Elgar's 1900 work for singers and orchestra, had to wait forty-five years for its first complete recording. Sir Henry Wood made acoustic recordings of four extracts from The Dream of Gerontius as early as 1916, with Clara Butt as the angel, and Henry Coward's Sheffield Choir recorded a portion of the Part I "Kyrie" in the same period. Edison Bell recorded the work under Joseph Batten in abridged form in 1924. HMV issued excerpts from two live performances conducted by Elgar in 1927, with the soloists Margaret Balfour, Steuart Wilson, Tudor Davies, Herbert Heyner and Horace Stevens; further portions of the first of those two performances, deemed unfit for publication at the time, have since been published by EMI and other companies.
Dynamic is an Italian independent record label located in Genoa. Founded in 1978, it specialises in classical music and opera, especially rarely performed works and has produced several world premiere recordings. The Dynamic catalogue contains over 400 titles, with about 25 new titles added each year and is distributed in 32 countries.
Brilliant Classics is a classical music label based in the Dutch town of Leeuwarden. It is renowned for releasing super-budget-priced editions on CD of the complete works of J.S. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and many other composers. The label also specialises in new recordings of early music, chamber, organ and piano music.
Dunedin Consort is Scotland's leading baroque ensemble based in Edinburgh, Scotland, recognised for its vivid and insightful performances and recordings. Formed in 1995 and named after Din Eidyn, the ancient Brittonic Celtic name of Edinburgh Castle, Dunedin Consort’s ambition is to make early music newly relevant to the present day. Performing on period instruments, with choruses often numbering just one to a part, the group presents concerts that are both intimate and invigorating, often aiming to recreate the music as it was originally intended. Under the direction of John Butt, this has seen the ensemble earn two coveted Gramophone Awards – for the 2007 recording of Handel’s Messiah and the 2014 recording of Mozart’s Requiem – and a Grammy nomination. In 2018 it was shortlisted for a Royal Philharmonic Society Award in the Ensemble category.
Alec Robertson, MBE was a British writer, broadcaster and music critic. He wrote music criticism for Gramophone for more than 50 years, beginning with the magazine's very first issue in 1923. He later served as that magazine's music editor from 1952–1972.
Brighton Festival Chorus is a large choir of over 150 amateur singers based in Brighton, UK. One of the country's leading symphony choruses.., and considered "one of the jewels in the city's musical crown", BFC performs in major concert halls throughout Britain and Europe, particularly in Brighton and London.
Arcangelo is a UK-based early music ensemble founded by Jonathan Cohen in 2010. It performs and records music from the Baroque and Classical repertoire, ranging from Monteverdi to Beethoven. It is noted for its approach based on the collaborative tradition of chamber music making.
Accentus Music is a German classical music record label and production company founded in March 2010 in Leipzig Germany, where the company is based. The label produces audio recordings (CD) and video (DVD/Blu-ray).
