Welcome to Hyperion Records, an independent British classical label devoted to presenting high-quality recordings of music of all styles and from all periods from the twelfth century to the twenty-first. Hyperion offers both CDs, and downloads in a number of formats. The site is also available in several languages.
Please use the dropdown buttons to set your preferred options, or use the checkbox to accept the defaults. He also found the instrument, occupying the entire West wall of this enormous edifice, spacious enough to accommodate a constant stream of stars from the international musical firmament, including Liszt, Sarasate, Clara Schumann and Anton Rubinstein.
He was to hold the post for some twenty years. The English organist and conductor Andrew-John Smith was educated as an organ scholar at New College, Oxford and the Sweelinck Conservatorium, Amsterdam. This is his first recording for Hyperion. There are various reasons for this, not all of them musical and many entirely unjustified. Up until the s he was considered very modern, at times offensively so, but his adherence to classical principles and his clear conception of the parameters within which all art should function meant that during his later years he was increasingly considered old fashioned.
The fervour with which he argued his cause in this regard went a considerable distance towards sealing the fate of his reputation. During the twentieth century many composers eschewed the subservience of logic to expression.
Many have inferred from this a total absence of emotion in his music which is not the case, or indeed the point. These views are ultimately philosophical, not musical, but since they diverge so radically from the prevailing aesthetic of his day it is perhaps unsurprising that he was misunderstood.
