The Hyperion record label was founded by Ted and Doreen Perry in 1980, and their son Simon, its current director, maintains the tradition. It’s a company with a mission, recording rarely heard works by neglected or forgotten composers.
From the outset, they say, they have always tried to create an environment where inspiration can flourish—unknown works are given sufficient rehearsal, using the best producers and engineers in the best venues, and, most of all, working with skilled orchestras, conductors and pianists who are fully committed to their projects.
For me the most remarkable of these is their series of Romantic Piano Concertos.
Like Cédric Tiberghien who will be one of the composers on the sixtieth disc, and others such as Sergei Bortkiewicz, Alexandar Goedicke, Alexander Dreyschock, Jose Vianna Da Motta, Henyk Melcer Szczawinski. If I had had the money and the time – and the space! – I would have collected all of these remarkable performances of people often famous in their time and leading eventful professional and personal lives, some of their work now brought to life again in superb, dedicated performances, with recordings of high quality.
Purists may find this exercise unrealistic – the piano concerto becoming a competitive sideshow, ‘anything the last one did, I can do better’.
.