“Twenty years ago it was the same old dinosaur record companies that every once in a while, every four or five years, would launch a new Beethoven Symphony cycle with, you know, with he newest hot, young conductor with predictable results," he says. "People just kind of lost interest.”

With more than 115 million recordings sold to date, people are clearly paying attention now. And no one is more surprised than Klaus Heymann, the company’s 76-year-old founder.

He launched Naxos, in part, to distribute recordings made by his wife, world-class Japanese violinist Takako Nishizaki.

Heymann is a German-born entrepreneur who doesn’t play an instrument and can’t read music. He’s convinced those were the perfect qualifications for the job.

“I had run other very successful businesses before I started the record companies. So I looked at that with the cold eye of the businessman and I said, ‘This is all crazy how they run this business. Why don’t we do it differently?’”

Heymann’s approach was so different, some industry observers initially labeled his tactics predatory. Anne Midgette, a music critic with The Washington Post, says he was accused of taking advantage of artists who were desperate to record.

“They didn’t pay the kinds of expenses or royalties or deals that were then customary in the business," says Midgette. "In fact, Naxos was about 10 years ahead of its time in that.”

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