This is the second volume of Otto Klemperer’s ‘live’ authorized broadcasts from 1955 and 1958. None has ever been published before. When comparing the conductor’s studio accounts, Rob Cowan in Gramophone magazine said of the first set: ‘Viewed overall, what we have here is the Klemperer we already know and love, but granted wings and, trust me, you can tell the difference almost straight away’. Klemperer had a great affection for Mozart’s Symphony No.25, here almost a minute faster than his 1956 account. In his booklet note, Richard Osborne describes the performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No.5 from the 1958 Edinburgh Festival as “a performance that genuinely gathers itself to greatness.” Klemperer’s performances of the Brahms Requiem were justly famous, and this 1955 ‘live’ account precedes his acclaimed 1961 studio recording and is almost five minutes faster. Gramophone described the latter as follows: “Klemperer’s reading of this mighty work has long been famous: rugged, at times surprisingly fleet with a juggernaut power.” In this ‘live’ performance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Klemperer is joined by the baritone Hans Wilbrink from the Munich State Opera and the German lyric soprano Elfride Trötschel, a protégée of Karl Böhm. The Mozart and Brahms recordings have been sourced from the Lyrita Recorded Edition Trust, while the authorised BBC broadcast of Beethoven Symphony No.5 is from another collection.

Classical Music

This fourth album in the Toccata Classics survey of the chamber music of London-born Stephen Dodgson (1924–2013) offers a first installment of his many works for woodwinds. Much of it brings Dodgson’s sense of fun to the fore, often through rhythmic mischief or an insouciance that recalls Poulenc, but it also has that particularly English strain of lyricism that suggests the impermanence of beauty. British composer and broadcaster Stephen Dodgson’s prolific musical output covered most genres, ranging from opera and large-scale orchestral music to chamber and instrumental music, as well as choral works and song. He wrote in a tonal, though sometimes unconventional, idiom. Paul Griffiths, in The Oxford Companion to Music, writes that Dodgson “proved adept at producing likable, well-crafted music to order, often for unusual chamber ensembles.”

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

The orchestral music of the English composer David Hackbridge Johnson (b. 1963) is one of the most important discoveries to have been made by Toccata Classics. This second volume brings two mighty symphonies: the dark and tragic No. 10 (2013), cast in a single monumental span, and the three-movement No. 13 (2017), a fierce and fiery affirmation of life. They are complemented here by an orchestral ‘motet’ which passes plainchant in kaleidoscopic review. Writing in Gramophone, Guy Rickards said of Hackbridge Johnson’s Ninth Symphony: “what is so astonishing is not his ambition in attempting such large, big-boned structures… but that he possesses the compositional technique to achieve them so completely… This is a profound, complex, and visionary utterance.” Paul Mann, who here leads the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, is a regular guest conductor with many orchestras throughout Europe, the USA, Australia and the Far East. He enjoyed a famous collaboration with the legendary rock group Deep Purple and was a close friend of its keyboardist Jon Lord. He first came to international attention as first prizewinner in the Donatella Flick Conducting Competition, and as a result was appointed assistant conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. This is his twelfth project with Toccata Classics.

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Another major recording of this glorious concerto: Zehetmair, on top form, gets the partners of one's dreams in the Hallé with its great Elgar tradition.

Fridrich Bruk- born in Kharkov in 1937 and a Finnish resident since 1974- made his name as a composer of tangos. But the heart of his music lies in a series of eighteen symphonies, which have a strong narrative elemtn, some reflecting Jewish themes, others inspired by Karelia and Finland. Symphony No. 17, Joy of Life, has an autobiographical programme charting, in abstract terms, Bruk’s surmounting of the obstacles fate put in his path. Symphony No. 18 takes as its starting point a Latvian-Jewish folksong: it is premised on the deportation of his grandparents from their Latvian home, in an anti-Semitic campaign by Tsarist Russia that Bruk sees as a kind of prologue to the Holocaust. Gertruda Jerjomenko is a Latvian pianist and harpsichordist. She made her solo debut in a CPE Bach concerto with the Baroque orchestra Collegium Musicum Riga under the guidance of Maris Kupcs and has since appeared at concerts and festivals as a soloist, chamber and orchestra music, in Latvia and abroad.

Classical Music

Classical Music

During the late 1930s the Great Depression was still raging. Kreisler, Heifetz, the young Menuhin, Szigeti and Milstein represented the topmost echelon of violinists in box office draw, followed by Elman, Huberman, Spalding, the young Ricci and Morini. Many a European violinistic luminary had made an American debut during the Depression years, hoping for success. Despite everything, the United States was still the Mecca for musical artists, in terms of financial reward. But in the face of intense competition only a violinist of the very highest qualifications - and one whose musical personality and character were in some measure different from those of the reigning elite - could hope to launch a top-level concertizing career. Such an artist was René Charles (Zino) Francescatti. At thirty-seven, he was already a fully seasoned performer when he made his American debut in November, 1939, playing the Paganini Concerto No.1 (complete version) with the New York Philharmonic. His rise to stardom had been long and arduous, but he was recognized eventually not only as the heir to Thibaud, once the 'greatest French violinist', but also as one of the world's leading violinists. Fellow-violinist Henry Roth said: 'As a bravura technician, Francescatti belongs in the first rank. And what is more important - he never sacrifices beauty of sound or sincerity of purpose in the interest of technical exhibitionism.' - This collection features never-before-released live performance recordings of favourite concertos and chamber works he excelled in.

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Black is the color of the bile said to induce a state of gloom. In the form of "melancholia," it has become an allegory of the artistic imagination. The hour of melancholy strikes at night, when the sleep of reason brings forth it's monsters. This CD takes us on a foray into the land of shadows: it's compositions make remarkable use of light and shadow effects while simultaneously recalibrating the relationship between ensemble and soloist in unique ways. Michael Jarrell's arrangement of a violin concerto for chamber orchestra refracts the solo instrument's line through the prism of the ensemble. The tale told by Stefano Gervasoni's "lowered" concerto for double bass is only superficially about dolce far niente; his music is a nocturnal creature that gathers odd sound forms - until the alarm goes off. Taking an (early-morning) look in the mirror, the solo flute in Durand's "Ombre/Miroir" finds itself still faced with shadowy creatures as well. And finally, in Brian Ferneyhough's seven tableaux vivants, the angel of history appears: in verses of poet Charles Bernstein he shows his gloomy face.

New York City native Tobias Picker was described by the "Wall Street Journal" as "our finest composer for the lyric stage" and by BBC Music Magazine as "displaying a distinctively soulful style that is one of the glories of the current musical scene." The new WERGO recording with pianist Ursula Oppens traces an evolution in the composer's writing for piano from the virtuosic challenges of his "Four Etudes for Ursula" and the jazzy, urbane landscape of "Keys to the City" to the lyrical simplicity of "Old and Lost Rivers", "... when soft voices die...", or "The Blue Hula". Listeners will also have a rare opportunity to hear the composer performing in the two piano version of "Keys to the City". This CD with mostly first recordings will make an invaluable contribution to the discography of contemporary American music.

Adolf Busch had been one of the highly celebrated violinists and greatly admired exponents of the Beethoven concerto in Europe before WWII, but had never recorded it prior to his emigration to the U.S. in 1939. After a period of relative neglect, he was invited by American Columbia to record the work in 1942, but the outcome was not a success. Critic Tully Potter tells the story in his linernotes: "On 7 and 8 February [1942] the Busch brothers ... collaborated with the Philharmonic-Symphony, in the Beethoven Concerto, Adolf airing a new set of cadenzas written the previous year. ...the Saturday-evening interpretation gained mixed notices, the best being very good, the worst very bad; and perhaps the violinist was not at his best. Two critics indicated that he seemed nervous--hardly surprising, when it was his first performance for years of a work he had been accustomed to play almost every week. He was certainly in excellent form on the Sunday afternoon: the CBS network broadcast was taken down by at least two home recordists and one of those documents is here released for the first time. It makes an admirable corrective to the official Columbia recording, made next day at Liederkranz Hall. Unfortunately the production was delegated to the talented but inexperienced Goddard Lieberson. Busch was palpably under strain in the opening movement, his nervousness exacerbated by Lieberson's insisting he stand on a raised platform, which made him feel remote from his brother and the orchestra and brought him too close to the microphone. The resulting poor balance caused him to reject the recording and it was not issued until after his death. The live performance is everything one might expect." The fillers include a Bach concerto (in a minor) never commercially recorded by Busch.

BRAHMS: SYMPHONY NO 2, TRAGIC

This album received the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Small Ensemble Performance (with or without Conductor).

This is the third volume in this phenomenal series devoted to Mexicoís greatest 20th century composer (volumes 1 and 2, CB8850 and CB8851 respectively won the 2003 and 2004 GRAMMYS in their categories). In this international collaboration between Southwest Chamber Music and Mexicoís Tambuco Percussion Ensemble, we hear a celebration of the composerís native culture, with such powerful works as Xochipilli (a pre-Columbian god of music) and the vocal works Cuatro Melodias and Lamentaciones. The other vocal works, with their melodic gifts, come close to revealing the operatic composer Chavez could have been. Of particular interest are the percussion works: the famous Toccata is here, along with Tambuco and one of his final works, the Partita for Solo Tympani. In between is the dramatic incidental music to a 1932 production, Antigona, apuntes para la Sinfonia. The previous volumes have been consistent best-sellers, and volume 3 should be immensely popular. Even more good news: the series, to be completed in 2006 to mark Southwest Musicís 20th anniversary, will eventually include the complete String Quartets and the complete works for piano and string ensemble. Definitely one of the most important chamber music releases this year!

Classical Music

This album received the 2005 Grammy Award for "Best Small Ensemble Performance (with or without Conductor)."

In the Romantic period, the connections between love and death were an obsession of artists. Composers were naturally drawn to explore the great themes that entered literature in the works of Dante, Petrarch and Goethe: good and evil, love and death. Liszt was no exception. The powerful, evocative works presented here range from moments of repose and contemplation to nearly unbearable contrasts of dynamics, pitch registers and tempi, dramatized by bold juxtapositions. “A fearless, flawless knight of the piano” is how Vienna’s Die Presse characterized pianist Carlo Grante.

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Classical Music