Top British classical music label is now available to stream

The prestigious British classical music record label Hyperion has been acquired by Universal Music and its extensive catalogue will be available for streaming.

British-Australian pianist Stephen Hough’s albums for the Hyperion label are now available for streaming.

The prestigious British classical music record label Hyperion has been acquired by Universal Music and with it comes the welcome news that the label’s extensive catalogue will be available for streaming. The move follows 43 years of resistance to streaming.

Already more than 200 albums – featuring pianists Stephen Hough and Steven Osborne, cellist Steven Isserlis, violinist Alina Ibragimova, chamber groups the Takacs and Goldner Quartets and a host of other major international stars – are available on Spotify. Eventually all of Hyperion’s 2500 existing titles – and many more to come – will be on the streaming platform.

The label, founded by the late Ted Perry and carried on by his son Simon, who remains managing director under Universal, has won a swag of awards since its landmark first release in 1981 of Emma Kirkby singing works by medieval composer Hildegard of Bingen.

Hyperion will still release physical CDs. Two of the latest of these feature Australian pianists in Brisbane born Piers Lane and British dual citizen and a favourite son of the label, Sir Stephen Hough.

Lane’s new album, Piers Lane Goes To Town Again, is a belated and somewhat delayed follow-up to the 2013 release of the same name, only this one contains pieces, mainly with a dance theme, from the 1700s to 2019, instead of concentrating on the 20th century as before. It’s an eclectic mix to say the least. Lane delves back into his childhood with the first work, a keyboard suite by Belgian Jean Baptiste Loeillet, not to be confused with Louis IV’s court composer Lully, which he came across as a 12-year-old boy.

Other great composers on the menu include Schubert – a selection of his delightful German dances and sentimental waltzes – Liszt’s Tarantella, a miniature attributed to Mozart and a taste of Spain from Albeniz.

Piers Lane’s new album on the Hyperion label is now available for streaming.

Lane shows his quirky side with Liadov’s humorous I Danced with a Mosquito and a “slinky foxtrot” written by Robert Constable in 2019.

There can’t be many collections where the 20th century Polish composer Karol Szymanowski features alongside Trinidadian “Queen of the ivories” Winifred Atwell. But that’s all part of the fun, and of course they are all played beautifully.

In contrast Hough’s recent offering of Catalan composer Federico Mompou’s Musica Callada is far more serious, but equally enjoyable for all that.

The title translates as “silent music” and is a series of short pieces in four volumes written between 1959 and 1967. Hough’s description that Mompou’s sounds represent “the music of evaporation” goes a long way towards explaining these remarkable 28 pieces – none of them more than three minutes long – in which nothing is resolved and the listener is left hanging.

If that sounds challenging, it’s not. This really is approachable intelligent music, full of contrasting styles and moods and with references to Mompou’s influences in the French piano school – notably Debussy, Satie and Messiaen.

Hough is masterful as always, dabbing splashes of colour that bring out the full artistry of this somewhat neglected composer who lived and died in Barcelona in 1987.

Both releases are available as downloads or CDs ($21) from prestomusic.com.