Hyperion Records Begins Streaming For The First Time

Following a 43-year recording history, the classical label Hyperion Records has started streaming 200 albums, with 2000 more to be released by Spring 2024

200 albums from the 43-year-old catalog of Hyperion Records have recently been made available to listeners on streaming services, after the label was acquired by Universal Music Group (UMG) in March 2023.

The record label will also have its entire catalog of over 2000 albums streaming by Spring 2024 — beginning with collection releases every fortnight from September 15, 2023. These will include choral music, string quartets, Baroque music, early music, and solo vocal music.

Hyperion’s first 200 streaming albums feature artists such as Alina Ibragimova, Steven Isserlis, Steven Osborne, Polyphony, Howard Shelley, and the Takács Quartet, among others.

Its subsequent catalog releases, including 45 Gramophone Award-winning albums, will feature Hyperion’s pianists Danny Driver, Stephen Hough, Pavel Kolesnikov, Steven Osborne, and harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani, among others in over 70 albums. 

As each featured artist’s complete discography becomes available on all streaming platforms, all future Hyperion titles will be accessible via streaming, physical purchase, and download.

Additionally, Hyperion’s cover artwork, digital booklets (usually available in English, French, and German), plus sung texts for choral and vocal music, will be made available on those streaming platforms with the capacity to host them.

Notably, through its wide-ranging repertoire spanning 900 years of Western art music from the 12th century to today, Hyperion offers the world’s first complete edition of the songs of Schubert over 40 discs. The complete piano music of Liszt is also available across 100 discs, as are more than 200 Romantic piano concerti across 87 individual records.

Hyperion was founded in 1980 in South London by the late Ted Perry MBE, who drove a mini-cab on numerous nights to fund the label's earliest recordings. Its move to streaming marks a major milestone. 

“I am enormously excited to be part of this moment in Hyperion’s history,” said pianist and long-standing Hyperion recording artist Sir Stephen Hough. “I’ve made over 40 albums for the company, pouring my heart, soul and fingers into each one, and now, thirty years after my first, they are to be made available through streaming to a much wider, indeed Universal, audience. It delights and touches me to be able to reach a vast new family of music lovers in this way.”

“I have always been thrilled to be part of the Hyperion family,” added Angela Hewitt OBE. “The recordings I have made for the label over the past thirty years have been highlights of my life and career and I am happy that my albums will be enjoyed by even more music lovers around the world.”

As an acquisition of UMG, Hyperion joins the latter’s portfolio of renowned classical labels, including Decca and Deutsche Grammophon — enabling UMG to preserve Hyperion’s back catalog, while continuing and developing its future work.

“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 catalog as well as new and future releases will be available on streaming platforms in the coming months,” said Simon Perry, son of label founder Ted Perry and Hyperion’s managing director for over 20 years.

“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,” he continued. “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.”

“The arrival of Hyperion on the world’s streaming platforms offers a special moment of discovery for this precious and pioneering label,” said Dickon Stainer, UMG’s President of Global Classics and Jazz.