For the first time in its 43-year history, award-winning classical music label Hyperion Records has made its recordings available on streaming services. The move comes four months after the label was acquired by Universal Music Group.

An initial 200 albums from the company’s back catalogue are already available via Hyperion Streaming. These were selected to represent the story of the label, celebrating the qualities that have made British label Hyperion a beacon of classical excellence over the past four decades.

There are key recordings from many of Hyperion’s impressive roster of artists, including period performance ensemble Arcangelo, Iranian harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani, Canadian pianists Marc-André Hamelin and Angela Hewitt, British classical pianist and composer Sir Stephen Hough, Russian violinist Alina Ibragimova, British cellist Steven Isserlis, British pianist Steven Osborne, choir Polyphony, British pianist and conductor Howard Shelley and quartet Takács Quartet, among many others.

In addition to the initial release of 200 catalogue albums, three of Hyperion’s newest releases are also available for streaming. These comprise the latest Dvořák album from the Grammy Award-winning Takács Quartet, a dazzling selection of choral anthems from Stephen Layton and Trinity College Choir Cambridge, and a new issue in The Orlando Consort’s acclaimed survey of France’s great poet-composer Guillaume de Machaut.

The choices demonstrate the label’s reputation for exploring wide-ranging repertoire, spanning 900 years of Western art music from the 12th century to today, across sacred and secular, choral and solo vocal to orchestral, chamber and instrumental, much of it unique to Hyperion.

Further collections will be released every fortnight until Hyperion’s entire catalogue is available for streaming by spring 2024. Subsequent ‘release chapters’ of various sizes will focus on genres such as choral music, string quartets, Baroque, early music and solo vocal.

The second phase of releases showcased some of the label’s great piano and keyboard stars, including pianists Danny Driver, Stephen Hough, Pavel Kolesnikov and Steven Osborne, and harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani, among others across more than 70 albums.

Simon Perry, managing director of Hyperion and son of label founder Ted Perry, commented: “We searched for and found a long-term home that is committed to our values, artists, recordings and editorial style and we are delighted that our entire back catalogue as well as new and future releases will be available on streaming platforms in the coming months.

“These first 200 albums tell our story, and we look forward to presenting all our work from the past four decades to a new global streaming audience artist by artist, series by series. Each had their challenges and now they come together to tell a narrative, hopefully a powerful one, of what can happen when you make space for musicians to thrive: it’s why Hyperion has worked.”

This move to streaming follows Universal Music Group’s acquisition of Hyperion in March 2023, which saw the label join UMG’s portfolio of world-renowned classical labels, including Decca and Deutsche Grammophon. The acquisition strengthens UMG’s position as the definitive home of classical music globally and enables it to preserve Hyperion’s distinctive identity and build its future by ensuring wider-than-ever exposure for both its impressive back catalogue and its continuing future work.

UMG’s president of global classics and jazz Dickon Stainer said: “The arrival of Hyperion on the world’s streaming platforms offers a special moment of discovery for this precious and pioneering label.”

 

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Classical music label Hyperion Records is making its extensive back catalogue of recordings available on streaming services for the first time.