The organ music of Joan (or Juan) Cabanilles (1644–1712) is virtuosic and colourfully Baroque, and touched with a distinctively Spanish intensity. Cabanilles is claimed as the most prolific of all composers for the organ, and publication of his works, begun in 1927, has not caught up with his output. But the surviving manuscripts can be seriously corrupt, requiring extensive editing and sometimes even detailed recomposition. This recording – Volume Three of an ongoing series – therefore uses a number of new editions to present the music as never heard before, as close as possible to what the composer might have intended. It was made using the historic (1732) organ in the Basilica of Sant Jaume in Vila-real, Valencia. Timothy Roberts was for twenty years principal keyboard of the Gabrieli Consort and Players; he also became director of His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts. In recent years he has also been active as a recording engineer and sound editor, composer and music-typesetter.

The first two Toccata Classics volumes of the orchestral music of the English composer David Hackbridge Johnson presented three mighty symphonies, conceived on a large scale and powerful in their utterance. The Fifteenth Symphony, tone-poems and other works offered here show a change in focus: an engagement with the natural world, reflecting the poetry of changing light and shifting winds, with man's impermanent presence dwarfed by the implacable grandeur of nature. Here Paul Mann, a frequent Toccata Classics artist, conducts the orchestra of the very town- Liepaja, on the coast of Latvia- that inspired the Fifteenth Symphony.

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.”

Renaissance polyphony is generally held to be stately, calm, reassuring. But this programme of Palestrina’s six-part Missa sine nomine, complemented by five of his motets and three by Marc'Antonio Ingegneri (c. 1535/36–92), was recorded after the Choir of Girton College, Cambridge, had undertaken a tour of Israel and Palestine. There the music and its texts (‘How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?’) took on an extraordinary poignancy, with the dispossession and desperation of thousands of years ago animating the restrained dignity of Palestrina’s counterpoint with an unexpectedly topical intensity. The Girton College Chapel Choir has gained an impressive reputation as one of the most distinguished mixed-voice choirs at the University of Cambridge. As an international prize-winning ensemble comprising around 26 students, it has built its reputation through regular choral services in Girton College Chapel and frequent performances in parish churches and cathedrals across the UK. Choir members are all undergraduate or graduate students at Cambridge University.

The American composer Richard Moriarty (born in Boston in 1946) spent his professional life as a pathologist, taking up composition upon his retirement as a student of Adolphus Hailstork and Richard Danielpour. His deeply felt orchestral song-cycle We That Wait, using poems from the American Civil War written by women, and the expansive, exuberant Missa Adsum! Celebrating Women, are both grand statements in a proud American tradition of Neo-Romanticism, accessible, direct and sincere. Of the premiere performance, one reviewer wrote: “Adsum-Celebrating Women was a tour de force, whose title comes from the Roman rite of ordination when candidates are called by name and answer “Adsum- Present!” It was sung with passion and beauty…” (M.D. Ridge)

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.

This recording of music by Ernest Krenek follows on from Toccata Classics’ wildly successful recording, in two albums, of his complete piano concertos. It covers almost half a century of his compositions, and shows the sheer range of his creativity. There are early piano fugues written for his teacher, Franz Schreker, via elegant fin de siècle Viennese lyricism to a relaxed application of Schoenberg’s dodecaphonic technique- often enlivened with a surprising degree of charm and a knowing sense of humor. The Ernst Krenek Ensemble is joined here by three of the finest lieder singers currently active, Laura Aikin, Bernarda Fink, and Florian Boesch. The Ernst Krenek Ensemble has set itself the task of introducing Ernst Krenek’s important and extensive chamber music oeuvre to the programmes of international concert halls, although its repertoire also includes works by composers such as Schubert and Beethoven, who provided Krenek with important stimulus. Its musicians delve with special curiosity into Krenek’s less familiar works and reveal the many colorful facets of his substantial output. Concerts have taken the ensemble throughout Europe and the USA.

The musical language of the New York-based Arnold Rosner (1945–2013) had its roots in the modal harmony and rhythm of pre-Baroque polyphony and evolved in an array of unusual directions, producing a style that is instantly recognizable and immediately appealing – as can be heard in the three works on this recording. Rosner’s Nocturne suggests the immensity – and the implacable violence – of outer space, whereas his overture Tempus Perfectum has its starting point in Renaissance dance. The monumental Sixth Symphony opens with music of volcanic ferocity and vehemence; the central Adagio then provides an island of troubled calm before the dignified opening of the finale presages a symphonic Allegro of wild, freewheeling energy; only when its immense force is spent does this powerful masterpiece sink to an uneasy close.

REVIEWS:

I first came across Arnold Rosner’s music on a 1990 Harmonia Mundi Modern Masters CD of tonal American 20th Century music, reviewed here and here (in a later reissue), and now available only as a download or second-hand. The work recorded there, the Responses, Hosanna and Fugue, was so evidently influenced by Vaughan Williams’s Tallis Fantasia that I was intrigued, to say the least.

This disc begins with the Nocturne Op.68, in which Rosner sought to suggest the movement of planetary bodies in the vastness of space. He tried to do this by initially evoking a mysterious swirling atmosphere that is occasionally interrupted by violent outbursts. Melodic fragments gradually coalesce into a melody for strings, which is further developed and intensified by the inclusion of the rest of the orchestra. Like many such ‘descriptive’ pieces composed over the last 150 years, one would never guess at the underlying creative stimulus, but that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable.

It is followed by Tempus Perfectum: A Concert Overture. Its archaic title reflects Rosner’s modern adaptation of a medieval form in 98 metre. Rosner was interested in early music and here he uses a type of canzona notable for its markedly rhythmic material and separation into distinct sections. The effect is of triads superimposed on the main theme at various points, and the work, which sounds markedly antique, gradually achieves a much more modern climax on (predominantly) strings and trumpets, before dying away.

The most impressive work on this superlatively recorded and performed CD, is Rosner’s 6th Symphony. Its first movement is one of extreme emotional turbulence, represented by ferociously explosive rather angular music that lasts for its ten-minute duration. I am strongly reminded of the first movement of the Vaughan Williams Fourth Symphony, although Rosner is not quite so dour.

I don’t think there can be much doubt that throughout the Symphony this influence persists, and the Sinfonia Antartica informs the second, slow movement. In fact, I am indelibly reminded of the ‘Landscape’ movement of the RVW work. Having said that, Rosner doesn’t quite manage to conjure up the stupefying power so evident in the Antartica, despite a slightly more colorful orchestral palette and a willingness to use the tam-tam almost to abandon. RVW brings an organ to the shattering climax of his symphony, but an organ is one instrument not employed by Rosner. The movement begins in a hushed atmosphere, with a slightly oriental sounding theme. This is developed towards the emotional centre of the movement where the composer’s use of strings (to emphasize the melody) is gradually superseded by the appearance of woodwind, brass and percussion to great effect.

His gift of writing impactive and indeed, memorable music, is very noticeable throughout the work, but particularly so in this movement and in the last, where RVW in ‘galumphing’ mode makes an appearance early on. A reliance on the cymbals and later, the tam-tam disturbs me a little – this is a trait that is very evident in the works of some contemporary American tonal composers, perhaps influenced, however subconsciously, by film music. Notwithstanding, since I love the sound of cymbals and tam-tam in a sumptuous orchestral panoply, I will remain only very slightly disturbed and revel in the sheer orchestral splendour of the whole thing. The final five minutes or so of the last movement begin with an ethereal woodwind solo, which appears repeatedly, sometimes on the brass, only to be interrupted by cataclysmic eruptions. The movement fades into silence with quiet recollections of earlier themes.

Throughout this CD the recording is truly splendiferous and the playing of the LPO is virtuosic beyond praise. It must be wonderful to hear these pieces performed live by this top-notch orchestra under the baton of a committed conductor, such as we have here in Nick Palmer. The booklet is detailed and informative in both biographical and musical detail. Toccata Classics are to be congratulated and praised for this release, consisting as it does entirely of first recordings. I look forward to others in the series.

-- MusicWeb International (Jim Westhead)

The Swiss composer �mile Jaques-Dalcroze (1865-1950) is best remembered for his development of Eurhythmics, which teaches the appreciation of music through movement. But Jaques-Dalcroze, who studied with Delibes and Faur� in Paris and with Bruckner and Fuchs in Vienna, was a considerable composer in his own right, with operas, cantatas and orchestral works among his substantial output. These piano works, all written in the 1890s, are generally lighter in style, showing the influence of Schumann and the salons of Paris. Winner of several national and international prizes, the Milanese pianist Adalberto Maria Riva received a special mention at the International Competition of Music IBLA Grand Prize in 2008. This distinction allowed him to undertake a tour in the USA in April 2009 with a concert in Carnegie Hall. His repertoire ranges from Bach to contemporary composers, a sequence that he presents in a cycle of concert-conferences based on history and pianistic literature in a number of cultural and musical institutions across Europe.

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.

The case of the composer Hans Winterberg (1901–91) is a strange one. A survivor of the Terezín concentration camp, where he had been interned as a Czech Jew, after the War he settled in Munich as a German citizen, and his music enjoyed a number of broadcasts – but after his death, his estate disappeared into the vaults of the Sudeten German Music Institute, where it was placed under embargo, emerging only in 2015. This first album of his music reveals an unusual and individual voice, an idiosyncratic blend of Stravinsky, Janácek and Hindemith, with touches of Poulenc, often expressed with brittle humor and rhythmic verve. The Arizona Wind Quintet is the faculty ensemble-in-residence at the University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music in Tucson. Formed in 1977, the AWQ has cultivated a tradition of excellence in both performance and teaching. The other instrumentalists on this recording are distinguished musicians active in the Tucson area, several of them teaching at the Fred Fox School of Music, although they appear in concert and at festivals all over North America.

This album introduces both a new voice and a new choir to western audiences: the Estonian P�rt Uusberg (b. 1986) is well known at home as a film actor as well as a composer; and in 2017 Collegium Musicale carried the coveted Silver Rose Bowl of the EBU competition 'Let the People Sing' home to Tallinn. Uusberg's works use many of the devices that have made recent Baltic choral music so popular in the wider world: melodies that unfold calmly over long bass lines, sustained by suspensions and piqued by mild dissonance - reflecting an awareness of the immensity of nature in music that is both exquisitely beautiful and infinitely touching. Endrik Uksvarav graduated from the Estonian Academy of Music and Theater as a conductor in 2004. The Estonian chamber choir Collegium Musicale was founded by Endrik Uksvarav in October 2010, with a repertoire extending from Renaissance to contemporary music. A special place in that repertoire belongs to Estonian composers, among them Arvo Part, Erkki-Sven Tuur, Helena Tulve and Part Uusberg. The aim is to act as ambassadors for Estonian music at the same time as delivering an intense emotional experience.

This recording pairs music for violin and piano by two young British composers who found themselves marooned in American exile by World War II: Richard Arnell (1817-2009) and Stanley Bate (1911-59). Both composers established respectable careers for themselves in the New World before returning to Britain, Arnell in 1947 and Bate in 1949. Arnell’s music can be warmly lyrical and fiercely dramatic by turn, rather like its volatile and energetic composer. Bate’s First Violin Sonata has echoes of two of his teachers- Vaughan Williams and Hindemith. Plymouth-born violinist Patrick Wastnage attended Dartington College of Arts from the age of sixteen. He went on to the Guildhall School of Music, where he studied with Yfrah Neaman, Erich Gruenberg, David Takeno and later with Sandor Vegh. Joining the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1986, he has led a parallel career as soloist and chamber-music player. Elizabeth Dunn studied the piano at the Guildhall School of Music with Geraldine Peppin. Since then she has performed extensively as soloist, accompanist, and in chamber groups.

The Austrian composer Walter Bricht (1904-70) was one of many musicians of Jewish ancestry who fled Vienna after the Anschluss for the safety of the USA; Bricht became a valued professor at Indiana University in Bloomington. Fittingly, it is the nearby Fort Wayne Philharmonic, in its own debut recording, that has made the first album of Bricht’s music. The recording reveals another major Viennese voice and points to yet another potentially important career cut off in the bud by the Nazis. Bricht was reportedly Franz Schmidt’s favorite student, and the late-Romantic styles of the two men are indeed very closely aligned in their mix of Baroque counterpoint, Classical form and Wagnerian chromatic harmony: Bricht’s Symphony in A minor might almost be Schmidt’s No. 5.

Almost every pianist, it seems, wants to record Ravel, but virtually all of them have overlooked a treasure trove of music for solo piano: the composer's short score for Daphnis et Chlo�. Some parts of it are unplayable by a single pair of hands, but with judicious arrangement this working draft can be mined for diamonds. Only a handful of musicians have made their own suites for solo piano; here the Lithuanian pianist Indre Petrauskaite, carefully observing Ravel's original textures, has produced something new: a 40-minute concert suite of unsuspected Ravel for solo piano that also respects the dramatic outline of the original ballet. The other, more familiar works here extend the ideas of antiquity and transcription. Indre Petrauskaite recently performed this programme at City University of London for the completion of her DMA degree.

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.

The piano music of the Estonian composer Heino Eller (1887-1970), a total of 206 works, is the largest part of this composer's output. It is also the largest body of works in Estonian classical music. But most of these pieces are unknown, even though the best of them are original contributions to the piano repertoire of the twentieth century, with Eller's sensitive lyricism underpinned by gentle humor and an occasional epic tone. Volume Six in this series of nine recordings brings over half a century of music, from 1910 to 1965. It includes the melodious Sonatina in G minor, the spirited 'Piano Music in Folk Tone' and the exquisite 'La fille du nord.' Sten Lassmann is one of the leading Estonian pianists of his generation. He appears frequently as a soloist and chamber musician, performing in some of the most prestigious venues, such as the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto, Purcell Room in London, the Large and Small Halls of the Tchaikovsky Conservatoire in Moscow, the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatoire Concert Hall in Milan and the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing. He has been playing and recording Heino Eller's piano works since 2008 and in 2018 recorded the final, ninth volume. Born in 1982 in Tallinn into a family of musicians, he studied at the Tallinn Central School of Music, the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris and the Royal Acadey of Music in London.

The music of London-born William Wordsworth (1908–88) – a great-great-grandson of the poet’s brother Christopher – lies downstream from that of Vaughan Williams and Sibelius; like that of his contemporary Edmund Rubbra, Wordsworth’s music unfolds spontaneously, as a natural process, with a sense of grandeur perhaps enhanced by his move to the Scottish Highlands in 1961. Three of the four works recorded here display the sober dignity of the instinctive symphonist; the Variations on a Scottish Theme reveal a sly sense of humor behind the serious countenance. John Gibbons has conducted most of the major British orchestras. He has been Principal Conductor of Worthing Symphony Orchestra- the professional orchestra of West Sussex- with which he has given many world premieres of neglected works. He studied music at Queens’ College, Cambridge, the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music, winning numerous awards as conductor, pianist and accompanist. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, vice chairman of the British Music Society, and choral director at Clifton Cathedral. His own music has been performed in various abbeys and cathedrals as well as on the South Bank, London.

Born in Havana in 1954, the Miami-based Orlando Jacinto Garcia studied with Morton Feldman and has inherited some of Feldman's concerns. His music likewise evolves gradually over slow-moving spans of time- here and there with an echo of West Coast minimalism. Like the still surface of the sea, the works on this album (three of them concertante pieces for virtuoso soloists) mirror the unhurried movement of natural phenomena. They often feature textures of considerable delicacy- and occasionally hint at larger forces behind the apparent stasis. This album presents some of his most recent choral compositions, in recordings conducted by the composer. Violinist Jennifer Choi is a frequent collaborator with composers, and has premiered solo and chamber works written for her by several well-known contemporary composers. Pianist Cristina Valdes is known for presenting innovative concerts with repertoire ranging from Bach to Xenakis. Fernando Dominguez, clarinet, is the leading exponent of the contemporary repertoire for clarinet in Mexico.

These five works, from three different stages of Hans G�l's long life (1890-1987), all show his consummate craftsmanship but are otherwise quite different in character. The passionate Piano Quartet (1914), downstream from Brahms and Dvor�k, brings the grand gestures of Romanticism into the early twentieth century. The 1935 Sonatina in F major for violin and piano, recently rediscovered, and the three Sonatinas from 1956 put a premium on textural clarity and lyrical approachability; here the contrapuntal ingenuity, ceaseless thematic development, harmonic freedom and rhythmic unpredictability of G�l's language animate the music from within. Newcastle-born pianist Sarah Beth Briggs was a finalist in the BBC Young Musician competition at the age of eleven and studied with Denis Matthews and Edith Fischer. Katalin Kertesz is the leader of the Kertesz Quartet, with which she recently recorded the four string quartets by the nineteenth century Czech composer heinrich Wenzel Veit. Nichola Blakey, viola, enjoys a busy freelance career, giving performances across the UK. Cressida Nash, cello, is a founding member of Musicians South West.

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.

The American composer Arthur Farwell (1872–1952) is remembered as the leading member of a group of ‘Indianists’ who used Native American tribal melodies in their own compositions. In fact, Farwell’s stylistic range was much wider than is realized today, as this third album in Lisa Thomas’ pioneering survey of his piano music demonstrates. It reveals the influence of both Debussy and Skryabin, perhaps even Busoni and, in the two ‘Navajo War Dances’ here, intriguing parallels with Bartok. Farwell plainly had an imaginative mind with a sharp sense of keyboard drama, color, and atmosphere- and a sense of humor: which other composer ever wrote a ‘Laughing Piece?’ Lisa Cheryl Thomas graduated with a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in piano performance from the University of North Texas in 2010. She is herself of Native American stock, counting members of the Cherokee, Blackfoot, and Sioux tribes among her ancestors, and her doctoral thesis addressed ‘Native American Elements in Piano Repertoire by the Indianist and Present Day Native American Composers.’

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.

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 – ripe for rediscovery – includes seven symphonies, fifteen violin sonatas among much other chamber music, songs, and choral and piano pieces. His expansive E flat Piano Trio of 1905 sits firmly in the Viennese Romantic tradition downstream from Schubert and Brahms, with one lovely tune following another, whereas the Three Songs, written only four years later, look forward to the lyrical intensity of Korngold. Violinist Laura Roelofs is currently Assistant Concertmaster of the Michigan Opera Theatre Orchestra and director of the string performance area at Wayne State University in Detroit. Stefan Koch is a frequent performer with the Kalamazoo Symphony, West Michigan Symphony, Toledo Symphony, and Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestras. Mary Siciliano has a successful private studio and gives pedagogy workshops throughout the USA. The bass-baritone Seth Keeton is an Assistant Professor of Voice at the University of Utah School of Music.

Gara Garayev was the leading Azerbaijani composer of the twentieth century. His music fuses the western traditions exemplified by his teacher Shostakovich an the classical and folk heritage of his homeland. The two works recorded here illustrate Garayev’s stylistic range: his Violin Sonata (1960) is Neoclssical in manner, whereas the 24 Preludes (1951-63) combine influences from the Russian piano school (not least Prokofiev) with elements from Azeri modes and the rhythms of Arabic-Persian lyric poetry. This recording introduces the stellar violinist Vadim Repin to the Toccata Classics label. The presentation includes a bonus video of the film Sonates d’automne, shot during the recording of this album.