Hyperion Records picks up support

PEOPLE have been rallying around Hyperion Records since a ruling went against it in May in a defense of copyright case. They’ve even mailed donations to the independent British classical label to help fund future recordings.

“We’ve received about 20,000 pounds [$35,000] in the last three months,” says managing director Simon Perry. “One American gentleman sent us $6,000. But most of the donations are small. One security guard sent 12 pounds. ‘That’s all I got to spare this month,’ he wrote. I wrote back, ‘That meant more to me than anything else.’ ”

In May 2004, the label lost a suit brought by Lionel Sawkins after the company released a CD of 300-year-old music by French Baroque composer Michel-Richard de Lalande -- music that Sawkins had edited. As Perry explained to The Times in March, Hyperion had paid Sawkins a $3,500 editor’s fee, but the British musicologist claimed that his work on the 2002 album “Music for the Sun King” entitled him to author’s royalties. A London court agreed with him, and it was an appeal of that judgment that the label lost in May.

Perry says he’s recently settled with Sawkins for approximately $9,800 for damages but that he has yet to pay Sawkins’ legal fees, which could as much as double in a final settlement.

“It still could go up to a million sterling,” or $1.78 million, Perry says.

The case may be taken up in the House of Lords, which could overturn the verdict of the lower courts, according to Perry. But that would take years.

“We won’t get any money. The victory would be the principle. I still think that editors should not get the same protection a composer gets for writing an original piece of music,” he says.

The label has enough projects in the can to get through June. Beyond that, its future is uncertain. The donations will help, but they are only a drop in the bucket compared with the nearly $2 million that Hyperion spent last year. “Twenty-thousand pounds will buy 1 1/2 solo piano recordings,” Perry says.

Responding to the label’s situation, its artists, producers and engineers have offered their services for free, according to Perry. Others have said they’d be patient about getting paid.

“It’s a nightmare, an absolute, utter nightmare,” Perry says. “This has so little to do with music and what we do, our business.”