In 1999, when the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra recorded its first CD on the Naxos label, no one guessed at the adventure that lay ahead. In the decade since then, the partnership has yielded 11 discs and two Grammy Awards.

The Philharmonic's 11th disc for Naxos, devoted to the music of Marcel Tyberg, is set for release in late August.

The recordings have made the BPO part of one of music's great success stories.

Klaus Heymann, Naxos' founder, is music's miracle man. He has taken classical music, once widely dismissed as a dying business, and found a fortune in it.

His label is now the world's largest producer of classical music. Naxos (named for a Greek island) makes money not from its budget-priced CDs but on spinoff industries, such as distributing, licensing, and offering paid subscriptions to the massive Naxos Music Library. It has 44,000 albums and counting, and comes complete with its own iPhone app.

It all started with love, says JoAnn Falletta, the BPO's music director.

Heymann had been in the audio business before he turned to the recording industry in 1987 for the sake of his wife, Japanese violinist Takiko Nishizaki.

"It is such a romantic story," Falletta says. "She's a beautiful woman, and a magnificent artist. He asked her, 'How can I help you?' She said, 'It would be so helpful to be able to record.' He started Naxos for her."

Do what you love, the saying goes, and the money will follow. Heymann's success suggests that's true.

At 72, he is still loving what he does and finding new ways to do it.

"The classical music industry will be around for a long time, but we don't know what it will look like," he says on the phone, in his courtly German accent. "Downloads will continue to have product, physical products will be around, then all kinds of subscription models -- mixes of paid and unpaid subscriptions. Maybe some new physical formats, like USB sticks -- there will be a business.

"We're about to release our first Blu-ray audio disc, John Corigliano's 'Circus Maximus,' " he says. "We're going strongly into eBooks."

With rapidly changing technology throwing numerous businesses into confusion, Heymann's imagination and optimism make him an inspiration beyond the music set.

"Some of us are timid about changing our world, but he's not afraid of it," Falletta says. "He's energized by it."

Sleepless in Nashville

Heymann, who divides his time between Hong Kong and New Zealand, is in Nashville for meetings when we talk. Falletta wonders if he ever sleeps.

"When I e-mail him, I always get a response within an hour," she marvels. "I never know what part of the world he's in, and I know sometimes I must be e-mailing him in the middle of the night. He cannot be sleeping much. He's running this multimillion-dollar empire."

Naxos began small, by featuring little-known orchestras and musicians who were not household names. But the quality was high, and the music was, in many cases, unusual.

Heymann, a music fan, followed his heart.

He loves Janacek, the thorny Czech composer, and financed a disc of Janacek suites. "I commissioned the suites myself, at great expense," he says. "I had them arranged by a Slovak composer, beautifully recorded by the New Zealand Symphony."

The violin has a place in his heart.

"Being married to a violinist, I listen to all the interesting violin repertoire. I listen to [Pablo de] Sarasate. And there is this fabulous young Chinese violinist, playing the Saint-Georges violin concertos." Heymann is referring to Naxos artist Qian Zhou, playing the music of Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a fascinating 18th century composer with African roots.

"We record so many interesting things based on listening," Heymann says.

"We have a flexible, responsive decision-making process, a small management team. We can say, 'Let's go ahead and do it.' It must be harder for a big company with several layers of management."

'The Buffaloes'

Heymann first approached the BPO in 1999, for Naxos' "American Classics" series. Gradually, the orchestra branched out to European composers, as with the new disc. Tyberg was a Viennese-born composer who was killed by the Nazis. Mystical and deeply religious, he produced large-scale, Romantic music which now is almost completely unknown.

Recently, when the BPO released an all-Richard Strauss disc, Falletta laughed as she told The News what Heymann had said, that he saw the BPO as an orchestra for big music.

Heymann, also laughing, admits that's true. "It's an orchestra that can play Strauss and Mahler and all the things we have been recording. And they've all been very so well received."

He and Falletta have a clear rapport. "She has a lot of good ideas," he says. "I will say, 'OK, this is viable, this is not viable, this is too far out' -- and I think most of the time we agree. Most recordings fill gaps in our catalog. All of them are things we don't have in the catalog.

"I listen to each recording on its own. I have full confidence in the orchestra, in the music directors, conductors. When the new recordings arrive, I listen with great interest."

Falletta loves how Heymann calls the BPO "the Buffaloes" -- "as if we're a sports team."

"He's an amazing man," she says. "We started working together before I met him. We had a long e-mail correspondence."

They met in Japan. "Klaus found out I was conducting there, and said, 'I'm coming to meet you.' It was quite an experience. Here was this icon of the music world. He's a gentleman with such grace and an Old World courtesy and gentility. That gentle exterior belies the genius businessman behind it."

Heymann's attitude is a fine balance between hands on and hands off.

"My impressions of him are very favorable," says BPO Concertmaster Michael Ludwig, who recorded Corigliano's "The Red Violin" Concerto with Falletta and the BPO, and also Dohnanyi violin concertos with Falletta and the Scottish National Orchestra.

"They're great projects," Ludwig says. "He gives us complete freedom artistically to shape and create the work that we're trying to accomplish."

'Coping With Snobs'

Currently, Naxos releases about 30 CDs a month. But Heymann does not count on many of them to make money.

"Most orchestral recordings don't make money these days," he admits. "There are the production costs, and we have to invest in cover designs -- it's very difficult to make money.

But each noteworthy addition to the catalog adds to Naxos' prestige, which fuels the entire business.

Naxos' Web site shows the firm's freewheeling nature. A section called "Introduction to Classical Music" confronts everything from Meeting the Performers to Coping With Snobs. "Music in Movies" exhaustively lists classics heard in films.

The range of Naxos imprints is dizzying. It includes British Light Music, Chinese Music, Early Music, Film Music Classics and Guitar Collection. A "Historical" line spotlights past legends, including violinist Fritz Kreisler and pianists Artur Schnabel and Buffalo native Leonard Pennario. "We're like Penguin books," Heymann says, alluding to Penguin's practice of republishing classics now in the public domain.

Heymann is surprised that other labels did not share his vision and compete with him.

"Especially in our early stages, the big record companies had all these huge back catalogs that they could have thrown at me, but they decided to exploit that back catalog in full-price recordings," he said. "They left me in peace."

Their loss is his gain. It is Buffalo's gain, too.

"I remember so clearly when we won the two Grammys. He sent a letter to the musicians," Falletta says. "I thought that was wonderful. In his rather formal, understated way, he was saying he valued that relationship, this is something he was proud of. It's been a very, very good relationship."

Has Heymann ever been to Buffalo to celebrate with the orchestra? He says no, he has never been here.

Always open to new ideas, though, he suggests he might come.

"If I get an invitation," he says.

A decade of discs

Here is a list of the discs the BPO has recorded for Naxos.

2001: Frederick Converse, "The Mystic Trumpeter" (recorded in 1999)

2002: Charles Griffes, "The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan"

2005: Aaron Copland, "Rodeo"; Suite from "The Red Pony"; "Prairie Journal"; "Letter From Home"

2006: Ottorino Respighi, "Church Windows"; "Rossiniana"; "Brazilian Impressions"

2006: Daron Hagen, "Shining Brow" (opera about Frank Lloyd Wright)

2007: John Corigliano, "Mr. Tambourine Man," "7 Poems of Bob Dylan," "Three Hallucinations"

2007: Franz Schubert, orchestration of "Death and the Maiden" Quartet, newly completed version of "Unfinished" Symphony

2008: Richard Strauss, Orchestral Suites

2008: John Corigliano, "The Red Violin" Concerto, featuring violinist Michael Ludwig

2009: Ernst von Dohnanyi, "Variations on a Nursery Song," featuring pianist Eldar Nebolsin

2010 (scheduled for release Aug. 31): Marcel Tyberg, Symphony No. 3

mkunz@buffnews.comnull