Hyperion Records: a guide to the great British record label

Tim Parry
Friday, November 29, 2024

In this month’s introduction to a classical record label, Tim Parry traces the history and varied output of a much-loved British company

When Ted Perry founded Hyperion Records in 1980, it was a good time to enter the business. The 1980s and early ’90s were a period of confidence and opportunity for record companies, with enthusiasm for the new CD format and thriving record shops.

Hyperion’s first release was of clarinet concertos by Finzi and Stanford played by Dame Thea King, which Perry secured for his new label by featuring a cow – King’s favourite animal – on the cover. The label’s breakthrough came with an album of music by the 12th-century polymath Hildegard of Bingen, with Gothic Voices and a young Emma Kirkby. While driving late at night, Ted Perry heard this music on BBC Radio 3. He asked the group to make a record and the result – ‘A feather on the breath of God’, recorded in 1982 – was a huge success, which Perry later joked paid for all his mistakes.

Among other artists who recorded for Hyperion in the early days were Graham Johnson and Leslie Howard, and two major surveys highlight Perry’s vision and loyalty. With an array of the finest singers of the time, Johnson recorded the complete songs of Schubert between 1987 and 2000 (a 40-disc box-set followed in 2005); and between 1985 and 1998 Howard set down the complete solo piano music of Liszt (a 99-disc box-set followed in 2011).

The breadth of repertoire on Hyperion to some extent reflects Ted Perry’s personal passions (early music, English song, the symphonies of Robert Simpson) as well as those of Mike Spring, Hyperion’s sales manager from 1988 to 2014, who introduced several of the label’s impressive roster of pianists – notably Sir Stephen Hough, Marc-André Hamelin and Steven Osborne – and coordinated the hugely successful Romantic Piano Concerto series.

Robert King and The King’s Consort made many recordings, including the complete sacred music of Purcell; Christopher Herrick recorded JS Bach’s complete organ works; Howard Shelley surveyed the piano music of Rachmaninov; the Nash Ensemble and the Florestan Trio contributed a wealth of chamber records; and cathedral choirs from Westminster (both Abbey and Cathedral) and St Paul’s to Winchester and Wells enabled Hyperion to corner another area of repertoire. The Schubert Edition was followed by similar surveys of songs by Schumann, Brahms and Liszt. Angela Hewitt recorded among other things the complete keyboard works of JS Bach.

Ted Perry died in 2003 and his son Simon took up the reins. Immediately Hyperion faced expensive legal action in a disputed copyright claim, a case it eventually lost in 2005. Although it recovered, the boom years were fading. Nevertheless, in 2006 Polyphony and Stephen Layton helped to establish the name of Eric Whitacre with ‘Cloudburst’, and the Takács Quartet recorded the first of many acclaimed albums for the label. The violinist Alina Ibragimova and cellist Alban Gerhardt added further lustre to an increasingly international roster.

For years Hyperion resisted the streaming services, until the company was sold to Universal in 2023. Its recordings are now available to stream, encouraging a generation of new listeners to explore the richness of this treasured catalogue.

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