Early LP releases include rarely recorded 20th-century British music by composers such as Robin Milford, Alan Bush and Michael Berkeley.
The venture's success was sealed with a critically acclaimed and popular disc of music by Hildegard of Bingen, A Feather on the Breath of God (1985), directed by the medievalist Christopher Page and his group Gothic Voices.
More recently, Stephen Hough CBE, recorded Rachmaninov's complete piano concertos and the Paganini Rhapsody using the composer's original score.
The label is renowned for complete recordings of lieder by Carl Loewe, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn, Richard Strauss, and Franz Liszt.
Hyperion maintained that the editions were not original compositions and therefore were not subject to copyright, and further that Sawkins did receive payment in the form of a hire fee from the performers for their rental.
While the damages Sawkins sought were thought to be small, the legal costs of the case were estimated to result in a liability to the company of hundreds of thousands of pounds sterling, making its future uncertain at the time.