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Private company

Erato Records

Logo: ™/®Warner Music Group Corp., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons3

Music label

Erato Records is a record label founded in 1953 as Erato Disques S.A. by Philippe Loury to promote French classical music. Loury was head of éditions musicales Costallat. His first releases in France were licensed from the Haydn Society of Boston, and he made Erato's first recording in January 1953: Marc-Antoine Charpentier's Te Deum with Les Jeunesses Muslcales.2 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

1953Founded1

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Erato Records is a record label founded in 1953 as Erato Disques S.A. by Philippe Loury to promote French classical music. Loury was head of éditions musicales Costallat. His first releases in France were licensed from the Haydn Society of Boston, and he made Erato's first recording in January 1953: Marc-Antoine Charpentier's Te Deum with Les Jeunesses Muslcales.2

Acquisitions

In 1992, Erato was taken over by Warner Music Group, which provided wider distribution and greater resources. The company retired the Erato label before 2003.

In 2013, the Erato Records label was revived with Warner Music Group acquisition of EMI Classics and Virgin Classics. Erato Records absorbed the Virgin Classics artists roster and catalogue, while the EMI Classics label's artists roster and catalogue was absorbed into the Warner Classics label, since the rights to the EMI Classics and Virgin Classics names were retained by the seller Universal Music Group. Alain Lanceron, formerly President of Virgin Classics and Director of EMI Classics France, joined Warner after its acquisition of another classical music label, the Parlophone Label Group, in 2013. He was made president of Warner Classics and Erato in 2014. All of these changes marked "a renewed focus on classical music within the [Warner Group]."

From Wikipedia’s article on Erato Records, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4

Timeline

  1. 1953Founded Founded1

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

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