A year ago, plenty had never heard of Platoon – the label owned by Apple that is determined to produce and disseminate music a little differently. As a new year dawns, the label has assuredly made is mark. It can count Gramophone Editor’s Choices and GRAMMY nominations among its many accolades. More importantly, it has consolidated its reputation among serious music lovers thanks to its judicious relationships, flexible A&R policies, first-rate production values and boundless imagination as to what classical music can be, and to whom.

2024 was the year in which Platoon consolidated its relationships with top orchestras and conductors, including a sharp profiling of Gustavo Dudamel’s work at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, with a series that documents part of the orchestra’s Pan-American Music Initiative, a project exploring new commissions to emphasize the importance of Latin American heritage. The partnership has resulted in critically acclaimed recordings - one of which has received no less than five GRAMMY nominations. The album is Revolucion Diamantina, dedicated to the music of Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz and including her violin concerto Altar de cuerda, performed by María Dueñas, and the powerful ballet score from which the album takes its name. A second recording of music by Ortiz, including the composer’s new Cello Concerto performed by Alisa Weilerstein, will be released in May, and Fandango, the first release in Platoon’s partnership with Dudamel and his LA Phil, has already won a Latin GRAMMY.

A central ingredient to that success is the artistic freedom Platoon gives its artists – freedom to do what they do best, with excellence and flair. When the conductor Dalia Stasevska wanted to address the way albums are programmed, accessed and listened to, she found a natural partner in Platoon. Her album Dalia’s Mixtape made a clean break with tradition, presenting a carefully curated journey though ten works that reimagined the sonic possibilities of the symphony orchestra, released one-by-one over the course of the months, each track accompanied by an analytical podcast.

Dalia Stasevska (photo: Matthew Johnson)

As a label that started out in other genres, Platoon appears to be particularly exhilarated by classical music’s combination of bold adventuring and venerable tradition. The label has partnered with the Vienna Philharmonic to bring the orchestra’s historic Musikverein subscription series to the audio market for the first time. At the same time, it is seeking out new voices in orchestral music – making projects happen between orchestras and artists as varied as Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA and The Police founder Stewart Copeland. 2025 will see the launch of Platoon Presents at King’s Place – a series of exciting live events at the favourite London concert hall, close to the label’s King’s Cross HQ and studios.

Any label at the creative forefront needs to trust emerging generations to show how things might be done in a rapidly changing world. Platoon takes seriously its responsibility to nurture the careers of young artists, and was delighted that its own violinist Stella Chen was recognised as Young Artist of the Year at the 2023 Gramophone Awards. Looking ahead to next year, string quartet of-the-moment, the Attacca Quartet, will release a compelling new account of Ravel’s String Quartet, while Daniel Pioro’s uncompromising take on Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons – recorded with Manchester Camerata – will combine the work with new poetry by Sir Michael Morpurgo. Also planned is a new recording of Philip Glass's Violin Concerto from Anne Akiko Meyers and the LA Phil.

Platoon can best serve its new, path-finding artists by also benefitting from established ones. Staking a claim to the very core of the central European orchestral repertoire, its recent recording of Bruckner’s Symphony No 7 from the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra under Vladimir Jurowski was deemed ‘deeply considered and unusually persuasive’ by Gramophone, and awarded an Editor’s Choice (11/24) while pianist Kirill Gerstein’s recent Music in the Time of War project found a natural home on the label.

Alexandre Kantorow (photo: Sasha Gusov)

Nothing better encapsulates Platoon’s willingness to trust innovators while learning from experience like the recent acquisition, by Apple, of the distinguished Swedish label BIS. Not only does BIS’s extraordinary back catalogue provide the company with a bedrock, it allows it to continue to consolidate its core-classical offering courtesy of longstanding artists and vibrant newcomers.

Following the Nordic label’s GRAMMY award in 2024 for Kaija Saariaho’s Reconnaissance – performed by the Helsinki Chamber Choir under Nils Schweckendiek – the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra’s performance of Sibelius’s Suites is nominated this year, while house artist Carolyn Sampson released her 100th album in 2024 and was named Artist of the Year at the Gramophone Awards. Rarely away from Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice page for long, BIS’s latest accolade came in the November issue, which deemed the completion of young French pianist Alexandre Kantorow’s survey of the Brahms piano sonatas ‘a standout recording’.

There is plenty more to come from both BIS and Platoon – and together they present an alternative future for classical recording.