Like Korngold, Toch, Schoenberg, Zeisl and Zemlinsky, Richard Stöhr (1874–1967) was another Austrian composer driven into American exile by the Nazis. His generous output of music, being rediscovered at last in these Toccata Classics recordings, includes seven symphonies, much chamber music, songs, and choral and piano pieces. The first two of his fifteen violin sonatas offer a seamless outpouring of fin de siècle Viennese lyricism, with one good tune following another, in a style somewhere between Brahms and Korngold. Ulrike-Anima Mathe’s international awards include first prizes at the European Violin Competition in Vienna in 1985 and at the Young Concert Artists Audition in New York in 1988. In 1999 she was appointed violin professor at the Hochschule fur Musik in Detmold. The American pianist Scott Faigen enjoys a distinguished career as concert pianist, composer and conductor. He has served on the faculties of the National Academy of Music, the North Carolina School of the Arts, and the Stuttgart Music Conservatoire. Since 1989 he has been on the faculty of the Mannheim Conservatoire.

Although much of the music of the Dutch composer Hendrik Andriessen (1892-1981) has now been explored in recordings, his works for piano largely remain to be discovered. This first conspectus of his piano music covers fifty years of composition, showing how early influences - among them Bach, Brahms, Franck, Hindemith and Ravel - were subsumed into a musical language distinguished by it's textural clarity and harmonic warmth. Five of the works on this release are receiving their world premiere recording. Jacob Nydegger, a native of Texas, studied with Blanca Rodriguez, winning first prize at the seventeenth annual Petroff Piano Competition and receiving the Outstanding Perfomer award at Texas State Solo and Ensemble Contest in 2012 and 2013. Since then he has studied under Seth Carlin at Washington University in St. Louis, and he currently studies with Joseph Banowetz at the University of North Texas.

The Scottish musician Helen Hopekirk (1856-1945) was regarded as one of the major concert pianists of her generation. She also made a lasting contribution as a piano teacher in Boston, Mass., after her emigration in 1897. As a composer, she forged an intriguing path by turning to the music of her native country as the wellspring of her creativity. The early pieces can sound like Brahms in the Highlands, and her later works marry Debussyan Impressionism with Hebridean folk-music, to evocative, touching and exhilarating effect. This is the first album dedicated to Hopekirk's music. Gary Steigerwalt, who is writing a biography of Helen Hopekirk, recently retired as a professor on the music faculty of Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusets, where he taught for 35 years. He gave the first performance in over a century of her Concertstuck with the Mount Holyoke College Symphony Orchestra in 2015.

After recent releases devoted to David Hackbridge Johnson and Steve Elcock, Toccata Classics now rescues another British symphonist from oblivion. Rodney Newton (b. 1945) earned his living as an orchestral timpanist and percussionist, becoming known primarily for his works for brass bands. Until now his substantial output for orchestra has remained completely unknown. This first recording of two early symphonies reveals a composer with a strong sense of melody, drama, and color, in the tradition of such earlier British symphonists as Vaughan Williams and Arnold. The tone poem Distant Nebulae, inspired by Charles Ives’ The Unanswered Question, reflects the vastness of the heavens in music of understated beauty and elegance.

The piano music of the Czech-born composer Antoine Reicha (1770–1836) – friend of Haydn and Beethoven, teacher of Berlioz, Liszt, Franck and many others – is one of the best-kept secrets in music. He was an important influence on composers of the next generation but apart from an innovative set of fugues his piano works have remained almost unknown since his own day. Encompassing Baroque practices as well as looking forward to the twentieth century, they are full of harmonic and other surprises that show this liveliest of musical minds at work. Reicha’s twenty Études ou Exercices, recorded here for the first time, manage to combine his maverick inventiveness with a considerable degree of charm.

Andreas Spreer writes: "No. 21, the 21st recording of Evgeni Koroliov for the TACET label is available! What I particularly love in the playing of Koroliov: his ability to work out under a veil of objectivity, faithfulness to the text and modesty details of such sensibility and expressivity that make me believe listening for the first time to that piece of music. The 19 Intermezzi by Johannes Brahms offer plenty of opportunity for that." Russian pianist Evgeni Koroliov studied at the Moscow Conservatory, and since 1978 has been a teacher at the Hochschule fur Musik und Theater Hamburg. He is mainly known for his performances of the keyboard repertoire of J.S. Bach, as well as the music of Haydn, Chopin, Debussy, Mozart, and Schumann.

Bach: Bach Drama

The relationship between Hans Werner Henze and Oliver Knussen was one of great mutual respect. The German composer admired the British conductor and composer for electrifying performances of Henze's own and other composers' works. Knussen was an untiring and enthusiastic champion of his friend Henze's music. The recordings collected here display Knussen's deep understanding of Henze's music. Knussen conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in sensitive and meticulous performances of compositions ranging from the composer's middle period to his last completed work. Los Caprichos transforms the bitterness and sarcasm in Francisco Goya's famous series of etchings into a tender and melancholy "Fantasia per orchestra" that makes only sparing use of contemporary stylistic devices. The large orchestral work Heliogabalus Imperator - a programmatic depiction of the life and death of the notorious Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus - also provides evidence of Henze's self-assured and idiosyncratic interpretation of modern music idioms. The Englische Liebeslieder for solo violoncello and orchestra express a wide range of emotional states, which are brought to life by cellist Anssi Karttunen.

James Weeks writes: "EXAUDI, long-established among the UK's leading vocal consorts, presents fresh readings of 19 of Gesualdo's madrigals from Books V and VI, combining rigorous stylistic understanding and tonal beauty with an overriding focus on the music's extreme expressive vision. The late madrigals of Gesualdo exert a strange and enduring fascination on the modern musical imagination. Listening today to these extraordinary messages of anguish and ecstasy, we are drawn back to his flame like lovers who can't let go, into the warp of chromatic harmony, the emotional hyper-intensity and mysterious otherness of this most tantalising early Baroque figure."

The BBC Singers and conductor David Hill join with one of the world´s oldest continuously running orchestras, The Norwegian Wind Ensemble (NWE), to present this major new arrangement of George Frideric Handel’s most celebrated oratorio – Messiah. Arranged for wind ensemble by NWE member Stian Aareskjold, this version here receives its world premiere recording with a stellar cast of soloists who bring this visionary re-scoring of this famous work vividly to life. The BBC Singers hold a unique position in British musical life. The choir’s virtuosity sees it performing everything from Byrd to Birtwistle, Tallis to Takemitsu. Its expertise in contemporary music has brought about creative relationships with some of the most important composers and conductors of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including Britten, Maxwell Davies, Poulenc and Judith Weir, Associate Composer of the BBC Singers and Master of the Queen’s Music. The Norwegian Wind Ensemble is a unique institution in Norway’s cultural life. The orchestra’s eventful history stretches back to 1734 and the ‘First Brigade Band’ or ‘Division Band’ of Fredriksten Fortress in Halden. It is the oldest orchestra in Norway as well as the oldest cultural institution of any kind with an unbroken history.

Russian Revolutionaries: Ewald & Böhme' marks both the centenary of the 1917 Russian Revolution and the launch of period instrument ensemble The Prince Regent’s Band’s survey of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Russian brass chamber music. PRB perform two of the revolutionary Victor Ewald Quintets in their original instrumentation along with works by the versatile composer and cornettist Oskar Böhme, a German emigrant to Russia who was caught up in the turmoil of the fall out of the revolution and executed by the Soviet regime. The Prince Regent’s Band was formed to explore the wealth of historic chamber music for brass and wind instruments from a period roughly defined as between the French Revolution of 1789 and the end of First World War in 1918. Members of the current The Prince Regent’s Band are specialists in the period performance field and perform with regular with internationally renowned specialist ensembles.

1629 was a remarkable year for new music in Venice. Heinrich Schutz, came to the city to learn of the latest music from Claudio Monteverdi and his contemporaries, publishing the seminal first volume of his 'Symphoniae Sacrae' during his visit. With the publication of further landmark collections from Dario Castello, Alessandro Grandi and Biagio Marini, this particular year provided a key moment in the development of the Italian Baroque style. Acclaimed period ensemble The Gonzaga Band makes its Resonus debut with a fascinating programme of works from this period that chart the journey through this incredible year for music. The Gonzaga Band was formed by cornettist Jamie Savan in 1997, with a mission to explore the intimate relationship between vocal and instrumental performance practice in the early Modern period. The ensemble takes its name from the ducal family of Mantua: the Gonzagas were powerful and influential patrons of the arts in the late Renaissance, who employed Claudio Monteverdi as their maestro della musica at the turn of the seventeenth century. Monteverdi wrote some of his most innovative music for the Gonzagas: his third, fouth and fifth books of madrigals, the operas Orfeo and Arianna, and the Vespers of 1610.

The Bulgarian Emil Tabakov (1947) follows in the footsteps of such musicians as Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss, being active as both composer and conductor. Like Mahler, he prefers to write for large forces and now has nine symphonies and an impressive series of concertos to his name. Again like Mahler, Tabakov's symphonies explore the darker side of the human spirit in epic scores as austere as they are powerful. Both the First Symphony and the Viola Concerto use small motifs to build up compelling symphonic structures, generating expansive, sometimes bleak, post-Shostakovichian landscapes that can explode with violence and energy. The composer and conductor Emil Tabakov began to compose at 14. From 1975 to 1979 he conducted the Ruse Symphony Orchestra. He then directed the Sofia Soloists Chamber Ensemble, the Sofia Philharmonic and several others. Alexander Zemtsvo has been performing as a solo violist since the age of 15 and at 23, was appointed Principal Viola of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2012 he left the LPO to dedicate himself to a career as soloist, conductor and chamber musician. In 2014 he made his conducting debut with the International New Symphony Orchestra Lviv, and the next year was apointed artistic director and principal conductor.

The great French conductor Pierre Monteux (1875-1964) was naturally considered a specialist of his native country’s music, though he would never allow this to restrict him. This new set of previously unpublished recordings seeks to set the record straight, with a strong representation of German repertoire, notably Brahms’ Symphony No.3 with the Boston Symphony, which he never recorded commercially, in a rare ‘live’ performance from the 1956 Edinburgh Festival. More Brahms featuring two celebrated virtuosos –the Violin Concerto with the French violinist Zino Francescatti, and the Double Concerto where he is joined by his compatriot Pierre Fournier, both ‘live’ recordings from the Royal Festival Hall in 1955. Both selections featured here are previously unpublished.

Alexandre Tansman (1897-1986) was one of the most prolific composers of the twentieth century. His fundamental style is a Stravinskian Neo-Classicism, animated by the dance-rhythms of his native Poland. It is also energized by a masterly command of counterpoint. This second installment in this first-ever survey of his piano music demonstrates its stylistic range, from Neo-Baroque via Polish folk-music and the orient to the Blues. Early in his career, Tansman settled in Paris, where he was helped by Ravel, but he was also another of the Jewish composers forced to flee Europe by the Nazis. A native of Texas, Danny Zelibor studied at Texas Christian University, where he studied with Tamas Ungar winning numerous accolades and scholarships. A top prize-winner in the 2014 Los Angeles International Liszt Competition, he is also a graduate of the University of North Texas, where he studied with Joseph Banowetz. He is currently pursuing a degree in Collaborative Piano.

Classical Music

String quartets by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart without historical performance practice - is that even possible nowadays? -Of course it is! At the same time, there is probably no serious classical musician who has entirely escaped its influence in some shape or form. We are not just talking about diligence in choosing "urtext editions" or in the choice of instrument. The changes creep into the smallest details of phrasing which people simply can't do as they used to, even subconsciously. This is borne by listening to many performances. Of course the Auryn Quartet is also subject to these influences. If, despite this, their performances seem conventional, then it's deceptive as their playing style is no longer conventional when seen in the light of modern performance practice. They refer back to a playing style that could be termed "historical" in a wholly different way, namely that of a musical generation that has now died out. Their role models and teachers were the Amadeus Quartet and the Guarnieri Quartet. The members of the Auryn Quartet were musically "socialized" in a different era to younger musicians and they choose not to discard the aesthetic sensibilities acquired in their youth as though they were just old-fashioned garments. They love the beautiful "old" string sound and keep this tradition alive, but with the diligence expected of today's musicians. The result is timelessly beautiful music.

ICA Classics is proud to present Vladimir Jurowski's recording of Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty. It was recorded live in December 2013 with the 'Svetlanov' orchestra. Jurowski has already accumulated a large catalogue of recordings all of which have received great critical acclaim. He is a proven seller. Jurowski's interpretation is based on his view that Acts 1 & 2 inhabit a Romantic sound world and then between Act 2 and 3, the sound changes completely becoming drier with much sharper outlines. He has said that if it were not for Tchaikovsky's untimely death, he would have developed a similar style of composition to Stravinsky between 1917 and 1928, around the time of Pulcinella. The Sleeping Beauty recorded here is performed complete. The State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia is one of Russia's oldest orchestras dating back to 1936. Over the past 80 years, it has been directed amongst others by Gauk, Rakhlin, Ivanov and the great Evgeny Svetlanov. In 1972, it was grated the honorary title 'academic' for it's exceptional creative achievements and in 2006 the State Academy Symphony Orchestra was officially named after Svetlanov. Jurowski was appointed Artistic Director in 2011.

For the Best of Tacet 2013, the label has chosen from their lengthy catalogue only the greatest and most famous composers performed by some of the finest ensembles in the world.. The tracks included here feature pieces by Vivaldi, Mussorgsky, Saint-Saens, Bartholdy, Chopin, Beethoven, Haydn, and more. All of these tracks have been taken from previous releases. Every one of the 'Best of Tacet' albums has been a stunning success. Ulrich Oesterle writes of Tacet recordings: "Unconventional ways of thinking and enormous skill produce sounds and musical results which are not only astonishing but also totally convincing. Tacet campaigns for quality. And Tacet stands for unusual artistic ideas, truly outstanding musical personalities and audiophile sounds. Tacet is successful and is now available all over the world."

This release has been sourced from the Richard Itter archive of 'live' recordings. The collection is very important for collectors because it has never been released before onto the market. Following the archive's launch in October 2017 with releases featuring Beecham, Bohm, Cantelli, Karajan, du Pre, Klemperer and Rostropovich, it has received universal praise from both the classical media and record collectors for the excellent sound and performances. Robert Casadesus was a renowned 20th century French pianist and composer who knew and worked with Ravel. He was especially known for his celebrated performances of the Mozart Concertos accompanied on record by George Szell- the Gramophone called it 'exquisite Mozart playing,' as well as his recordings of Ravel, Faure and Debussy. He recorded Beethoven's First, Fourth, and Fifth Concertos, the latter two multiple times, though these were all made in the studio. He also extensively recorded the Beethoven Violin Sonatas with Zino Francescatti, who also appears in ICA Classics' Pierre Monteaux set.

This previously unreleased live recording of Jacqueline du Pré playing the Schumann Cello Concerto is her first public performance of the work, given in the Royal Festival Hall on 12 December 1962 with Jean Martinon conducting the BBCSO. She had worked intensively on the concerto with Paul Tortelier in Paris prior to this concert. When Du Pré studied the Schumann with Mstislav Rostropovich at the Moscow Conservatoire in 1966, he exclaimed, ‘This is the most perfect Schumann I have ever heard’. The 1962 live performance of the Dvorák Cello Concerto by Rostropovich has also never before been released. He is partnered by Carlo Maria Giulini, who went on to to make a studio recording of the same concerto with him in 1977. The Times critic described this Edinburgh Festival performance as an ‘exciting’ and ‘emotionally supercharged interpretation’ with Giulini’s reading ‘full of finely wrought points of detail’. The attractive bonus features Rostropovich and his wife Galina Vishnevskaya in the Ária from Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras.

Walter Berry reflected in an interview in 1985, "we played in the Theater an der Wien (during the rebuilding of the Vienna State Opera) and we developed a certain style, a Mozart style which was connected very much to the singers of that time … this was an incredible ensemble." Harold Rosenthal, Editor of Opera magazine, described the staged performance at London’s Royal Festival Hall on 13 September 1954 as ‘a sheer delight’, highlighting the performances of Erich Kunz (Figaro) and Sena Jurinac (Cherubino), while Irmgard Seefried (Susanna) was ‘one of the joys of this recording’ (George Hall). These Richard Itter tapes of the live broadcast have never been released before, and the superb recording fully captures the atmosphere in this light-footed performance in a packed Royal Festival Hall to perfection.

Mexican composer Manuel Maria Ponce is best known for a handful of popular songs and guitar pieces, and yet he left a huge legacy of some 500 works- orchestral, chamber, and piano music, art songs, and folksong arrangements. These works together form the foundation of the Mexican national repertoire, and yet they are as good as unknown. The works recorded here- some for the first time- reveal a composer with a surefooted command of the orchestra: his early impressionism is infused with echoes of Mexican indigenous culture in textures of unsuspected richness. Jose Miramontes Zapata graduated from the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatoire in Leningrad. He has worked as pianist, choir director, and cultural manager. In 2000 he founded the Orquesta Sinfonica de San Luis Potosi and as artistic director and principal conductor he has promoted many choral and orchestral activities with local young musicians, developing a constant cultural growth in San Luis Potosi with more than 80 concerts per year. The San Luis Potosi Symphony Orchestra occupies an important role in the diffusion of Mexican symphonic music, with concerts in some of the major halls in Mexico, China, and Europe. Further releases of major Mexican symphonic works are in preparation with Toccata Classics.

The English composer Steve Elcock spent years writing music without ever expecting it to be heard: based in rural France, he worked as a translator, composing ‘for the drawer.’ A recent Toccata Classics recording of his Third Symphony and other orchestral pieces revealed him to be a major symphonic voice. The works on this first album of his chamber music show the same long-term control of harmonic tension, occasionally leavened by a mischievous sense of humor. The Clarinet Sextet and The Shed Dances are immediately appealing in their melodiousness and harmonic language, whereas the darkly aggressive String Trio No. 1 foreshadows the Third Symphony with its stark juxtaposition of contrasts, and An Outstretched Hand offers a disturbing comment on our troubled 21st century condition. The Veles Ensemble is a string trio based in London, its repertoire both exploring rarely heard masterpieces and bringing the classics to life. A special interest of the ensemble is in promoting new compositions and contemporary music.

The musical language of the New York-based Arnold Rosner (1945–2013) clothes the modal harmony and rhythm of pre-Baroque polyphony in rich Romantic colours, producing a style that is instantly recognisable and immediately appealing. This second Toccata Classics album of his orchestral music contrasts the high-spirited Unraveling Dances – a rhapsody with more than a nod to Ravel’s Bolero – with the powerful symphonic suite Five Ko-ans for Orchestra and Rosner’s dramatic, dark, hieratic setting of Kafka’s The Parable of the Law for baritone and orchestra. American baritone Christopher Burchett has appeared on the stages of opera companies throughout the United States and Europe, including New York City Opera, Santa Fe Opera, and The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Opera News has described him as a ‘fearlessly vulnerable’ performer, ‘who gave an unflinchingly, heroically human performance that will linger long in the memory.’ Nick Palmer is music director of the Lafayette Symphony in Indiana, North Charleston Pops in South Carolina and the ‘Evening Under the Stars’ music festival in Massachusetts; principal pops conductor of the Altoona Symphony in Philadelphia; and distinguished conductor in residence at Kentucky Wesleyan College.

REVIEW:

This is the second of Toccata’s blessed progression of discs of orchestral music by New York-based Arnold Rosner. You can find reviews of Volume One here and here. Toccata have also issued a chamber music disc. Rosner wrote serious tonal music and the performances on this disc and its recording qualities are a superb compliment to Rosner’s achievement. There is nothing circus-like, trivial or superficial in his output. Even his Millenium Overture packs a far from cheap punch - imposing and sturdy.

The Five Ko-ans for Orchestra comprise No. 1 Music of Changes, No. 2 Ricercare, No. 3 Ostinato, No. 4 Music of Stillness and No. 5 Isorhythmic Motet. They are like a sequence of Samuel Barber’s essays yet distinguished by this composer’s trademark incessant persistence and cool limpidity. These qualities are juxtaposed with passages that are gaunt, statuesque and imposing. The music is not at all ascetic: witness the Respighian horn whoops in the first of the Ko-ans and the brief climactic pages in the Fourth Ko-an. Rosner’s writing throughout these five separately tracked pieces is grand. Indeed, all three works on this disc are further testimony that a Rosner score could have been written by no-one else. That is not to say that certain facets of his language do not touch base with other composers. Vaughan Williams is one reference point but Rosner has his own spare yet dynamic style. Few composers’ music can attain the feeling that he evokes of a lonely listener in some temple looking up giddily at the capitals of the towering columns. That sense of being lost in the moment - an intensity of today’s mindfulness. The Third Ko-an, the shortest of the five, pummels away rapidly and with a motoric power that appears indefatigable. The Fourth is a more peaceful essay - relaxed repose dominated by woodwind solos. The valedictory Fifth ends with a drift into hard-won silence. A Ko-an is defined by Rosner as “a riddle, action, remark or dialogue not comprehensible by rational understanding but conducive to intense or prolonged meditation.”

The other works here include the vigorous 16-minute Unraveling Dances. Through eleven variations the composer draws on familiar musical references: Renaissance, Baroque and Middle Eastern. The writing is richly colored and almost extravagantly joyful use is made of the orchestra. The work rises to a formidable conclusion of dancing grandeur - Rosner’s aural window opened out onto the music of the spheres.

The disc finishes with the 24-minute setting of Kafka’s The Parable of the Law for baritone and orchestra. The words set are reproduced in Toccata’s booklet. The music is hieratic, dramatic and dark-hued. A typically striking introduction commands by quiet and confident insinuation. Soon the slightly mournful baritone, Christopher Burchett, enters, singing of his long and ultimately unsuccessful wait and pleading for entry to “The Law”. The music is sombre, chiming and mesmeric as befits the Kafka text but rises to fury and sneering as the singer presses his bootless case for entry. There is something of RVW’s Pilgrim about the man trying, without success, to persuade The Doorkeeper to permit him access to The Law. The words are less sung and more spoken in hopelessness at 13:00. Later on, Burchett superbly shadows the orchestra in a pitch of roiling excitement although the final pages spell deep peace.

The liner-notes are by none other than Walter Simmons who has done so much for US composers of the generations beyond Gershwin, Copland and Bernstein. He has been a doughty advocate of Rosner’s music as he has also of Schuman, Persichetti, Mennin, Barber, Bloch, Creston, Flagello, Giannini and Hanson. He is also the producer of this disc. I just hope that there are later volumes.

-- MusicWeb International (Rob Barnett)