Profile | Classical music label founder on stealing from a US army base, arguments in Hong Kong, and always being ahead of the curve
- Klaus Heymann came to Hong Kong in 1967, lost millions after the Vietnam war, and later founded Naxos – best known for its classical music catalogue
- On the way he fell out with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, married a Japanese violinist, and rebuilt his fortune distributing Bose speakers in mainland China
When Klaus Heymann was growing up in wartime Germany, his teachers liked him. As an evacuee from Frankfurt into the Bavarian countryside, he was the token city-slicker in class.
“I was always the smartest, the village kids always ran after me,” he says.
What effect did that have? He has a think. “It made me competitive. I was always class speaker, I always had a big mouth.”
The founder of the Naxos record label and now, at 86, chairman of the juggernaut Naxos Music Group, is still clearly an upright force.
We meet at his house in Hong Kong’s Kowloon area where he lives with his wife, the Japanese violinist Takako Nishizaki – his partner in Naxos, as in life – and their five Maltese terriers.
World geography has favoured Heymann, as a company named after a Greek island might suggest. He attended Frankfurt university, where he played, and coached, tennis. He had a yearning to go to Brazil, so he transferred for a term to Lisbon, to improve his Portuguese. Again, his teacher loved him.
