Naxos Broadens Line With Worthy Offerings

Budget and super-budget CDs have become such a fact of life that it’s tempting not to talk about price at all when reviewing the best of Naxos, theever-evolving and most prolific label in the field, which offers new, as opposed to the competition’s recycled, material. But the temptation must be resisted. Price remains Naxos’ most salient feature, although hardly its only attraction.

The latest Naxos wrinkle is its adding, in the past year, worthy relative esoterica to complement its until-now largely standard-repertory catalogue.

With Dvorak overtures or such a cult object as the First Symphony of Mili Balakirev--more about both shortly--Naxos is betting that what once might have been adjudged small-quantity repertory, to be sold at a high price (the theory being that the happy few will buy it no matter what it costs, and no one else will, under any circumstances) might appeal to the not-so-few at a lower retail cost.

“Try some Balakirev. It doesn’t cost any more than Beethoven,” an imaginary Naxos slogan might read.

In the process, Naxos may well be doing a better job of taste-broadening than any of the big labels.

Naxos covers what is becoming an ever-widening gamut with a flood of new releases, only two of which can be accommodated in today’s column.

First, the ever-astonishing Jeno Jando has his monthly outing, offering a spine-tingling program of Beethoven variations for solo piano, including, most importantly, the “Eroica” Variations (after its theme’s appearance in the finale of the “Eroica” Symphony, although it had made its debut even earlier, in the “Prometheus” ballet) and the splendidly terse 32 Variations in C minor (550676).

Jando brings a swaggering vitality to both sets. Beethoven’s light ning shifts of mood have rarely been realized with such a natural feeling for dramatic contrast, or such rhythmic acuity. Jando can thunder, and he can spin the most graceful of Beethoven’s Landler or clarify the most complex of his fugues, as is amply evidenced here.

The area where Naxos has been weakest, the large-orchestra repertory--too much product from the East European provinces--is considerably strengthened this month with, among others, the Dvorak and Balakirev programs.

Dvorak is represented by four of his marvelous concert overtures, “My Home,” “In Nature’s Realm,” the familiar “Carnival,” the stunningly dramatic, underappreciated “Othello” and the stirring overture to “Vanda,” an obscure, early opera.

The performances by the Manchester-based BBC Philharmonic under American conductor Stephen Gunzenhauser are consistently clean, vital and idiomatic, by no means inferior in musical quality to--and far better sonically--than the long-favored ones under Rafael Kubelik on Deutsche Grammophon.

Balakirev’s First Symphony, an exquisitely sentimental, tuneful hunk of Russian Orientalia in the Borodin vein, is presented with loving authenticity by the Russian State Symphony under conductor Igor Golovschin, and there are substantial rewards as well in the accompanying material, the same composer’s splashy/trashy piano showpiece “Islamey,” in Liapunov’s orchestration, and the gaudily overheated, equally enjoyable tone poem “Tamara” (550792).

Inexpensive Vox Boxes originated during the LP era with performances of varying quality on invariably noisy surfaces.

Super-budget Vox Boxes on CD are turning out to be another matter altogether, offering not only good value with reissues of material mostly from the 1960s but good sound as well, proving that the devil was in the original pressings rather the original tapes.

Particularly recommendable among recent Vox Boxes are those devoted to the complete solo piano music of Prokofiev, played with immense fire and muscularity by a still-thriving old pro, Gyorgy Sandor, who recently turned 81 (two boxes: 3500, 3 CDs, 5514, 2 CDs), and a 1980s collection of piano trios--the three of Brahms, the two by Mendelssohn, and Dvorak’s “Dumky”--from the admirable ensemble comprising pianist Joseph Kalichstein, violinist Jaime Laredo, and cellist Sharon Robinson (3029, 3 CDs).*