Klaus Heymann of Naxos Records
Frankfurt-born entrepreneur Klaus Heymann has spent 45 years of his life in Hong Kong. He is the founder of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and Naxos Records, an entirely Hong Kong-made company that’s one of the world’s most influential classical music labels. As this year marks the 25th anniversary of Naxos, the frank and charismatic businessman talks to Penny Zhou about life, his company and the many problems existing in Hong Kong’s performing arts scene.
I was born in 1936. My father worked in city government. My mother was
a housewife—something that she resented because her parents only invested in education for their sons. We were very poor, and meat wasn’t very often on the table.
Then the war came and changed everything. Father was drafted in the army so Mother took up his job in the government, as a lot of German wives did during WWII. When Frankfurt was bombed by the Allies, I was evacuated to a farm village. I was this city boy that the farmers’ kids would chase and beat up. But at least we got food to eat there.
I studied languages and literature in Frankfurt University, and spent a few terms in Portugal, France and England. It was a great experience for me because it prepared me later for my life in the Far East. As a young man, I learned to live among different people and in different cultures.
However, when I got back to Frankfurt, I was told that I couldn’t graduate on time because I didn’t do this and that. I once aspired to be a professor someday, but having studied at university, I really disliked its petty and rigid academic atmosphere. Plus, I had coached tennis to some rich people, which made me realize that their lives are much better than that of a professor. So I left without graduating.
You only need to graduate for your first job. After that, nobody cares. Will anybody ask me today if I ever graduated [from] university?
I moved to Hong Kong with an American newspaper I was working for. After that, I became an agent for Bose and ReVox. To promote both brands, I’d organize classical concerts here. But when the musicians came from abroad, they couldn’t find their records in local shops. I wrote to the record companies asking about it, and learned that they didn’t distribute in Hong Kong. So I started doing distribution as a hobby. That’s how I first got into the record industry.
Naxos came in 1987. In 1996, we were the first label in history to make our entire catalog available online for streaming. The idea was to allow people to listen to recordings online at very bad quality, then go to the shop and buy them. That enabled us in 2002 to launch our Naxos Music Library, which is a subscription service. And by 2003 we were the first label on iTunes.