ABSTRACT
A budget-priced, classical CD label established in 1987 by Klaus Heymann, headquartered in Hong Kong. Heymann began his career as a journalist, and then launched a mail-order electronics firm in Hong Kong during the Vietnam War. In the early 1970s, he became exclusive distributor for a number of audio companies in Hong Kong, and began organizing classical music concerts to promote high-end audio equipment. He also became distributor for several budget classical labels, including Vox, Hungaroton, Opus, and others. In 1978, he issued his first recording, made by his wife, Takako Nishizaki, a classical violinist, of the Chinese violin concerto, The Butterfly Lovers. The success of this recording led him to form his first label, HK Records, eventually incorporated into Pacific Music, which both released its own recordings and distributed many other Western classical labels throughout the region. After specializing in Asian music written in a classical style, Heymann decided to begin recording the standard Western repertoire with local orchestras, including the Hong Kong Philharmonic (he was a key supporter of this orchestra as a board member and fundraiser) and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, among others. He founded a new label, Marco Polo, for these recordings. By the mid-1980s, Heymann was producing most of his recordings out of Eastern Europe, where he had well-established contacts with several classical labels. In 1987 he founded a budget CD classical label, Naxos, originally marketing only in the Pacific Rim region. The label soon grew strongly in Europe and the U.S., where a branch office was opened in 1990. By the year 2000, the label had released more than 1,700 CDs, with 200 new releases planned per year. The label specialized in recording entire repertories by individual composers or by instrument, such as the complete Vivaldi concertos, a planned 150-200 CD set of organ music, 100 CDs of piano music, as well as the complete standard orchestral and chamber repertories. [website: https://www.naxos.com./]
CARL BENSON
One of the 33 affiliates of the North American Phonograph Co., established in 1890 in Omaha, Nebraska. E.A. Benson was president in 1890 and 1892; H.E. Cary was vice president and general manager in 1891-1892. The company continued to 1893. Leon F. Douglass began his career with the firm; he went on to success as an inventor and joined Eldridge Johnson’s Consolidated Talking Machine Co.
