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Violinist Takako Nishizaki is perhaps the most frequently recorded concert violinist of the digital era. She was also the first violinist to learn by way of the Suzuki method; her father, Shinji Nishizaki, worked with Shinichi Suzuki in developing the method, and Takako Nishizaki took instruction from both teachers. She made her debut at the age of 9, and further studied with Broadus Erle, starting in Japan and later at Yale University. Nishizaki finished her violin studies at Juilliard under Joseph Fuchs and in 1967 won second prize in the Leventritt International competition behind Pinchas Zukerman.

One would surmise that with her talent and beauty that American record companies would be getting in each other's way to obtain Nishizaki's recording contract. But they weren't, and by 1974 Nishizaki settled in Hong Kong, where she established a career as the pre-eminent violin virtuoso on the Chinese concert circuit. This was no small feat, as in China they take the violin seriously and its literature is central to the entire establishment of Chinese classical music. Along the way Nishizaki met and married German businessman Klaus Heymann, founder of HNH International, the corporate parent to the popular classical label Naxos. Heymann sponsored Nishizaki in an extensive series of recordings of Chinese classical music on his Marco Polo label. Some of these recordings sold into the millions of copies in China, providing the nest egg that launched the Naxos label in the late 1980s.

With Naxos, Nishizaki has recorded much of the standard Western violin literature, as well, but has made a special mission of recording key violin literature that is known in concert and in the classroom, but seldom represented on records. The most celebrated example of this tendency is her recordings of the concertos of Chevalier de St-Georges, but it also includes her interpretations of Charles August de Bériot, Louis Spohr, and Joseph Joachim. All of Nishizaki's recordings are notable for her generous, singing tone; flexible rhythmic sensibility; her sense of architectural symmetry in regard to whole movements; her ability to excite; and the sheer beauty of Nishizaki's sound.

The Slovak Philharmonic (in Slovak, Slovenská filharmónia) is one of the youngest among Europe's great symphonic ensembles, yet it has gained international renown in the 1990s and early 2000s. The orchestra has recorded extensively and has attracted top-notch international collaborators. The Slovak Philharmonic was founded in Bratislava, then part of Czechoslovakia, in 1949. Its first conductor, Vaclav Talich, and first music director, Ludovit Ratjer, were key figures in the orchestra's formation and emergence. In the 1950s, the orchestra began giving concerts in the handsome 1773 Reduta Bratislava concert hall, which has remained its home base. After Rajter stepped down as conductor in 1976, the orchestra had several other highly regarded conductors including Ladislav Slovak (until 1981), Libor Pesek, and, in 1990 and 1991, Aldo Ceccato, its first conductor from outside Czechoslovak lands. After Slovakia split peacefully from the Czech Republic in 1993, the Slovak Philharmonic went from being a strong orchestra in a country with many of them to something of a national flagship, and it increasingly attracted foreign conductors and instrumental collaborators as guests. Among the former group have been Claudio Abbado, Sergiu Celibidache, and Mariss Jansons. The permanent conductorship, however, remained mostly in Slovak and Czech hands; the renowned Jiří Bělohlávek served a term in the 2003-2004 season. That changed with the appointment of France's Emmanuel Villaume in 2009; he remained in the job until 2016, when he was succeeded by Britain's James Judd, a former conductor of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and the founder of the Miami Music Project. The orchestra has also been led in recent years by its permanent guest conductors, Leos Svarovsky (until 2018), Rastislav Stur, and Petr Altrichter. The orchestra has a large collection of recordings, most of them on the Naxos, Zebralution, and Denon labels; on Naxos the group released a recording of symphonic poems from Bedřich Smetana's Swedish period. ~ James Manheim

After beginning his career as a flutist, Bela Drahos has added the roles of chamber music leader and conductor to his dossier. With his recordings of the complete Beethoven symphonies, Drahos was propelled onto the international stage by the warm praise bestowed by critics, including H.C. Robbins Landon. Although he performs as an ensemble flutist and presents himself as an accomplished soloist, his work as a maestro has provided him with his greatest celebrity. While studying at the Gyor Conservatory beginning in 1969, Drahos won two flute competitions: in 1971, he took first prize in the Concertino Prague International Flute Competition, and in 1972, he placed first in an event produced by Hungarian television. After graduating with honors from Budapest's Liszt Academy, Drahos continued to win Central European awards such as the Hungarian Liszt Prize in 1985 and the Bartók/Pasztory Prize in 1988. Founder/leader of the Hungarian Radio Wind Quartet, Drahos was appointed principal flutist of the Budapest Symphony Orchestra in 1976. His solo career has taken him to numerous venues in Europe and the Far East. Drahos' podium activities significantly increased when he was engaged as resident conductor of the Hungarian State Symphony Orchestra in 1993. A classical period orchestra, the Nicolaus Esterházy Sinfonia, was assembled for Drahos in 1992 from members of the HSSO and principal players from other key Hungarian orchestras. Initially, the ensemble was intended for recordings only, but the NES eventually began performing public concerts. The ensemble's size varies from Baroque string groupings to mid-sized for the Haydn/Mozart symphonies and even larger for Beethoven orchestral works. The majority of Drahos' recordings have been made for the Naxos label. As a soloist, he has been featured on discs devoted to the flute sonatas of C.P.E. Bach, Vivaldi flute concerti, and the flute concerti of Leopold Hofmann. With the Nicolaus Esterházy Sinfonia, Drahos' traversal of the complete Beethoven symphonies won top recommendations from many news publications and music magazines; his sinewy, rhythmically firm readings satisfied both period performance enthusiasts and those who preferred the more substantial sound of modern instruments. The conductor's recordings of Haydn symphonies and masses have also earned high marks from critics.

Conductor Kenneth Jean might be called a true cosmopolitan, both in his background and his musical career. Born in New York City and raised in Hong Kong, where he began his music studies, he resettled in San Francisco at 15 and later moved back to New York for studies at Juilliard. Jean has held conducting positions in both the U.S. and Hong Kong and, not surprisingly, possesses a highly eclectic repertory, inclusive not only of standards by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Ravel, and other well-known composers, but of works by Chinese contemporary figures like Gang Chen, Zhan-hao He, Hu-guang Xin, and other such unfamiliar composers. He has held conducting posts with a varied array of orchestras, as well, from front-rank ensembles like the Chicago Symphony and Cleveland Orchestra, to second-tier groups like the Florida Philharmonic, to far-off ensembles (though not to him) like the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. Jean has appeared on countless recordings over the years, mostly for Naxos and its sister label Marco Polo.

Kenneth Jean was born in New York City on October 25, 1952. Brought up and educated in Hong Kong, he returned to the U.S. in 1967 and enrolled at San Francisco State University, where he studied violin. Four years later he enrolled at Juilliard for studies in conducting. Among his teachers there was Jean Morel. Jean debuted at Carnegie Hall at age 20, leading a performance by the Youth Symphony Orchestra of New York, an ensemble he was then appointed to serve as music director. Following graduation he served for two years as conducting assistant with the Cleveland Orchestra. In 1979 he accepted a post with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra as resident conductor, serving until 1985. Jean was also active in Hong Kong during the latter years of his Detroit tenure: from 1984-1993 he was the Hong Kong Philharmonic's principal guest conductor. 1986 was a watershed year for Jean: he was appointed music director of the Fort Lauderdale-based Florida Philharmonic Orchestra (departing in 1992), and also appointed associate conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, remaining until 1993. From 1997 to 2002 Jean served as music director of the Tulsa Philharmonic Orchestra. Jean has remained active in the U.S. and abroad since his Tulsa post. Among his more acclaimed recordings is Viva España!, a Naxos CD collection of Spanish orchestral works by Albeniz and de Falla, performed by the Czecho-Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra.

The events of Beethoven's life are the stuff of Romantic legend, evoking images of the solitary creator shaking his fist at Fate and finally overcoming it through a supreme effort of creative will. His compositions, which frequently pushed the boundaries of tradition and startled audiences with their originality and power, are considered by many to be the foundation of 19th century musical principles.

Born in the small German city of Bonn on or around December 16, 1770, he received his early training from his father and other local musicians. As a teenager, he earned some money as an assistant to his teacher, Christian Gottlob Neefe, then was granted half of his father's salary as court musician from the Electorate of Cologne in order to care for his two younger brothers as his father gave in to alcoholism. Beethoven played viola in various orchestras, becoming friends with other players such as Antoine Reicha, Nikolaus Simrock, and Franz Ries, and began taking on composition commissions. As a member of the court chapel orchestra, he was able to travel some and meet members of the nobility, one of whom, Count Ferdinand Waldstein, would become a great friend and patron to him. Beethoven moved to Vienna in 1792 to study with Haydn; despite the prickliness of their relationship, Haydn's concise humor helped form Beethoven's style. His subsequent teachers in composition were Johann Georg Albrechtsberger and Antonio Salieri. In 1794, he began his career in earnest as a pianist and composer, taking advantage whenever he could of the patronage of others. Around 1800, Beethoven began to notice his gradually encroaching deafness. His growing despondency only intensified his antisocial tendencies. However, the Symphony No. 3, "Eroica," of 1803 began a sustained period of groundbreaking creative triumph. In later years, Beethoven was plagued by personal difficulties, including a series of failed romances and a nasty custody battle over a nephew, Karl. Yet after a long period of comparative compositional inactivity lasting from about 1811 to 1817, his creative imagination triumphed once again over his troubles. Beethoven's late works, especially the last five of his 16 string quartets and the last four of his 32 piano sonatas, have an ecstatic quality in which many have found a mystical significance. Beethoven died in Vienna on March 26, 1827.

Beethoven's epochal career is often divided into early, middle, and late periods, represented, respectively, by works based on Classic-period models, by revolutionary pieces that expanded the vocabulary of music, and by compositions written in a unique, highly personal musical language incorporating elements of contrapuntal and variation writing while approaching large-scale forms with complete freedom. Though certainly subject to debate, these divisions point to the immense depth and multifariousness of Beethoven's creative personality. Beethoven profoundly transformed every genre he touched, and the music of the 19th century seems to grow from his compositions as if from a chrysalis. A formidable pianist, he moved the piano sonata from the drawing room to the concert hall with such ambitious and virtuosic middle-period works as the "Waldstein" (No. 21) and "Appassionata" (No. 23) sonatas. His song cycle An die ferne Geliebte of 1816 set the pattern for similar cycles by all the Romantic song composers, from Schubert to Wolf. The Romantic tradition of descriptive or "program" music began with Beethoven's "Pastoral" Symphony No. 6. Even in the second half of the 19th century, Beethoven still directly inspired both conservatives (such as Brahms, who, like Beethoven, fundamentally stayed within the confines of Classical form) and radicals (such as Wagner, who viewed the Ninth Symphony as a harbinger of his own vision of a total art work, integrating vocal and instrumental music with the other arts). In many ways revolutionary, Beethoven's music remains universally appealing because of its characteristic humanism and dramatic power. ~ Rovi Staff