Until Volume One of his orchestral music was released last year, the English composer-conductor Henry Cotter Nixon (1842–1907) has entirely disappeared from music history. But this series – presenting all his surviving orchestral music in its first-ever recordings – reveals him to have been one of the most accomplished English composers of his generation, with a style that takes in elements of Mendelssohn, Schumann, Verdi and Brahms. This second volume confirms his ability to handle extended symphonic structures and also presents a Sullivanesque lighter side. Ian Hobson, pianist and conductor, began his international career in 1981 when he won the Leeds International Piano Competition. This is the thirteenth album that he has recorded for Toccata Classics as either pianist or conductor. Paul Mann is a regular guest conductor with many orchestras throughout Europe, the US, Australia, and the Far East. He is well known for his collaboration with the rock group Deep Purple.

The Toccata Classics survey of the music of the Hungarian composer Ferenc Farkas (1905-2000) continues with this fifth album of his orchestral music. Earlier releases have presented the lighter side of his music, with its quasi-Baroque textures and buoyant good humor, but this one shows Farkas working on a larger scale and in generally darker mood. Here he uses the full resources of the symphony orchestra in a number of powerful and dramatic works, including two movements from a symphony that he later withdrew and an orchestration of Liszt’s Funerailles. A lighter bonne bouche-the Dances from the Matra, rather like Kodaly’s Dances from Galanta- rounds things off. Gabor Farkas (no relation to the composer) graduated from the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest in 2005, finishing his doctoral studies there in 2014 at his alma mater under the mentorship of Zoltan Kocsis. In March 2012 he won the Franz Liszt Award ( the highest Hungarian state award for artists).

Throughout his long career Liszt’s songs – perhaps the most neglected part of his enormous output – took a radical approach to form: he eschewed convention in his search for a sincere musical response to each text. His free-spirited creativity meant that a single song would often call on a range of stylistic devices, among them bel canto vocal lines, unaccompanied recitative, orchestrally conceived piano textures and audacious harmonic procedures. This first recording of his songs by a bass voice brings out both the power and poetry of Liszt’s remarkable imagination. The American bass Jared Schwartz was born in Berne, Indiana, where he began piano lessons at the age of three, violin at seven and French horn at ten. He began a double major in pre-med and music at Bethel College, Indiana, then studied piano with Alexander Toradze and voice with Victoria Garrett, earning a graduate degree from the Eastman School of Music. For Toccata Classics he has already recorded albums of songs by Faure and Flegier.

REVIEW:

Schwartz's forte singing is most impressive, and his voice remains lustrously smooth and elegant in all registers. His vocal coloring, use of contrasting dynamics, and feeling for the text combine to make his readings thoroughly engaging. When he sings with gentleness and lyricism he weaves a magic spell, as in ‘Des Tages Laute Stimmen Schweigen’, which ends sublimely as he delivers the final line of the text (“As night embraces you with gentle silence”). It is stunning.

Mary Dibbern, who collaborated with him in his Flegier album and in preparing his Fauré album, does a superb job with Liszt’s often challenging accompaniment. She also wrote the comprehensive and informative notes for the release.

I learned to enjoy Liszt through his songs, especially his early high-flying Schiller and Petrarch settings, sung by tenors. I am now enjoying a voice that plumbs the sonic and textual depths of the songs.

-- American Record Guide

Orlande de Lassus was one of the most prolific composers in history: he wrote more than 70 Masses and 700 motets, around 300 madrigals and 100 Magnificats, as well as hymns, German Lieder, French chansons and Italian villanesche. Around 1580 Lassus composed a four-voice setting of the eighteen Responsories for the second and third Nocturns of Holy Week, probably intended for the services in the private chapel of his employer, Wilhelm V, Duke of Bavaria. In these miniature dramas Lassus skillfully supports the text, as was then required by the Council of Trent, illustrating the human tragedy of the Easter story with exquisite music that is all the more moving for its restraint. This is the first recording of the critical edition of the Responsories prepared by the late Peter Bergqvist, the internationally recognized authority on Lassus’ music.

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.

The piano works of the Czech-born composer Antoine Recha - friend of Haydn and Beethoven, teacher of Berlioz, Liszt and Franck - are one of hte 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 o fharmonic and other surprises that show this liveliest of minds at work. The massive variation-set on a simple French gavotte recorded here for the first time reveals a composer who tempers his learning with a vivid sense of humor. Henrik Lowenmark is the world authority on the piano music of Reicha. He was born in Gothenburg and educated at the university there but has long since lived in Stockholm. Since his graduation he has been active as freelance musician in a multitude of contexts: solo, chamber, accompaniment and song-coaching. In 2006, he finished his master's thesis, The Piano Music of Anton Reicha, at the University of Gothenburg.

The Russian-born German-Swiss composer Paul Juon (1872-1940) produced a generous amount of piano music - no fewer than 35 opus numbers. That has yet to be explored in great details. This first instalment of the first-every survey of his piano music reveals a composer close to his Russian roots but also alive to the music of his own time. His style has much in common with Medtner and Rachmaninov, both friends from student days, but with a harmonic freedom that suggests Debussy. His inventive use of rhythm calls on folk influences from Azerbaijan, Armenia and elsewhere. This album is the first of a series of collaborations between Toccata Classics and Mexican musicians. The Mexican pianist Rodolfo Ritter is a frequent soloist with mos tof the major Mexican orchestras, performing the complete piano concertos of Bartok, Brhams, Brachmaninov, Shostakovich and Stravinsky, as well as less-well-known concertos by Martinu, Miguel Galvez-Taroncher and Xavier Scharwenka, alongside the world premieres of the Second Piano Concerto by Manuel Ponce, the Ricardo Castro Piano Concerto and the Second and Third Piano Concertos by Gonzalo Curiel, works which he has also recorded.

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.

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.

This recording revives long-forgotten sonorities that once would have been very familiar: the sound of piano and organ being played together. It also presents a Sibelius premiere: the arrangement by Sigfrird Karg-Elert of the suite from ''Pelleas and Melisande''. As the popularity of domestic music-making grew through the nineteenth century, it brought first the piano and, then, often the harmonium into well-off living rooms across the western world. Composers naturally responded, with original works and arrangements: Sibelius' Andante catabile was written after a visit to relatives who had both instruments in their salon. Karg-Elert, by contrast, was one of the world's outstanding virtuosi on both harmonium and organ and composed with his concert public in mind. Annikka Konttori-Gustafsson has appeared as a soloist, chamber musician and Lied pianist in her native Finald, of course, but in concert halls across the world, performing a wealth of Finnish music and French twentieth century repertoire. Dr. Jan Lehtola is one of the most successful and progressive Finnish organists of his generation. He has given more than 150 world and regional premieres and can be heard on more than 30 commercial recordings.

Einar Englund (1916-1999) was not only one of Finland's major symphonists; he was also one of his country's most important pianists. He was destined for a virtuoso career until he damaged a finger as a soldier in the Battle of Bengtskjar in the ''Finnish Continuation War'' in 1941 - but when he later discovered the bullet holes in his beret, he realized he had a lucky escape! Englund wrote surprisingly little for his own instrument, but the works he did produce glitter with a Prokofievan steely strength and textural clarity. They are also animated with the ironic humor that was typical of the composer himself. The pianist here is one of Finland's finest musicians, Laura Mikkola. The booklet essay is by Christian Holmqvist, Englund's biographer, and is followed by a personal reminiscence of Einar Englund by Martin Anderson, founder of Toccata Classics. Laura Mikkola studied at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinkin, the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and the School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana. She has been the recipient of many awards, among them second prize in the Queen Elizabeth International Piano Competition in Brussels in 2016.

Over a period of some twenty years, from the late 1720s, Handel composed a series of virtuoso arias using only the words ''Allelujah'' and ''Amen'' as his texts. They were probably for use in private worship, and take their place in the tradition of ''Divine Song'' established by Purcell and other compoesrs. Here they receive their first recordings, set in a context of contemporary sacred song and instrumental music, with the accompaniment provided by the beguiling soun dof two theorbos and chamber organ. They are heard here in the extraordinarily dramatic timbres of a male-soprano voice - perhaps as close as modern listeners can come to the vocal acrobatics of the castrati who so amazed their own audiences. Robert Crowe has worked for over 25 years as a male soprano, was a 1995 National Winner of the Metropolitan Opera Competition and has sung over 70 leading roles in operas and dramatic oratorios in the United States and across Europe.

Ernst Krenek’s seven piano concertos – four for solo piano, one for two pianos, one with violin and one with organ – is one of the major concerto-series of the twentieth century, but perhaps also the least familiar. This second installment in their first complete recording reveals breath-taking bravura writing – in the virtuoso piano technique, the dazzling orchestration and the stylistic integration of serialism and good-natured recollection of Viennese tradition. Mikhail Korzhev is a pianist that “projects strength, atmosphere and the ability to tangle even the knottiest passages…” (International Record Review). He is equally active as a solo recitalist, performer with various chamber groups, a soloist with orchestras, and as a recording artist. The first installment in this series received enthusiastic reviews in Gramophone, Diapason, and many other sources, and instantly made it to the shortlist of best new releases by Sunday Times (London) and Fanfare magazine.

The English composer David Hackbridge Johnson has been, until now, one of the best-kept secrets in music. He has built up a huge catalogue of works completely unknown even within the classical world. learning the orchestra from the inside, as a player, he has developed a confident and powerful language inherited in part from Brian, Copland, Janacek, Rubbra, Sibelius, Simpson, Tippett and other such masters. As these three pieces show, his music is capable of bold strokes of color and gripping dramatic gestures, expressed with a natural sense of symphonic architecture. Amazingly, he had heard almost none of his orchestral pieces before this recording was made in December, 2016. Paul Mann is a regular guest-conductor with many orchestras throughout Europe, the USA, Australia and the Far East. He is well known for his collaboration with the legendary rock group Deep Purple. This is the sixth recording for Toccata Classics.

These three quintets by the London-born Stephen Dodgson continue the exploration of his chamber music on Toccata Classics. Dodgson's musical language inherited something of Shostakovich's irony. Janacek's spiky energy and Britten's polished clarity, occasionally reaching further into the past in passages of Purcellian dignity. All these characteristics animated with a gentle, harmonic warmth of Dodgson's own. The result, in a typically English paradox, manages to be both elusive and direct. The Tippett Quartet has performed at the BBC Proms, and numerous other festivals. Emma Abbate has performed in duo recitals for international festivals and concert societies all throughout the world. Susan Monks is Principal Cello of the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Toccata Classics continues its survey of the music of the Hungarian composer Ferenc Farks with this sparkling album of works for wind ensemble. The chief characteristics of all eight scores recorded here are infectious good humor and a high charge of foot-tapping rhythmic energy. Like his teacher Respighi in Rome, Farkas went back to 16th and 17th century originals and brought them to life in arrangements for modern instruments. Laszlo Marosi enjoys a career leading orchestras and wind bands at concerts and festivals and in recording studios and academies around the world. Although he is very active in his native Hungary, his work is international - he is currently the artistic director of the International Band Festival of Villa Carlos Paz in Argentina. The Budapest Wind Symphony is the elite wind ensemble of Hungary, inviting musicians from the leading orchestras of the country. It draws its members from the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Hungarian State Symphony Orchestra, the orchestra of the Hungarian State Opera House, the dohnanyi Symphony Orchestra and the Hungarian Central Army Band.

Yevhen Stankovych is one of teh Ukraine's leading contemporary composers. His music for violin and piano is recorded here almost all of it for the first time. The works on this album cover a wide range of emotions, from wild highland dances that distantly recall Szymanowski to the plangent, lyrical lament of Maydan Fresco, protesting the deaths of demonstrators in Maydan Square in 2013. The musicians here - wife and husband team Ukrainian Solomia Soroka and American Arthur Greene - have consulted the composer on the preparation of this program, giving their interpretations a rare authenticity. Solomia Soroka was born in Lviv, Ukraine. She earned her master's degree and completed her postgraduate studies in the Kiev Conservatoire, and later served on its staff in the department of chamber music. Since her American debut in 1997, she has performed throughout the United States as well.

REVIEW:

Both Solomia Soroka and Arthur Greene play with sensitivity and passion and have been well recorded. The violinist’s own booklet notes are customarily excellent. This is a valuable addition to the roster of approachable and valuable new violin music available on the Toccata label.

-- MusicWeb International

Adolf Busch (1891–1952) is generally remembered as one of the great violinists and founder-leader of the peerless Busch Quartet. He was also, as one of the very few German musicians to take a stand against Hitler, a figure of moral authority who was forced into US exile, where he founded the Marlboro Festival. Busch was also an important composer, as an increasing number of recordings is beginning to show, writing in a tradition colored by his friend and mentor Max Reger. Busch's output for solo piano - recorded here for the first time - shows off his natural qualities as a contrapuntist and melodist, in music that is both immediately attractive and intellectually rewarding.

Robert Fürstenthal's story is an extraordinary one, a kind of "fairy-tale" of the twentieth century. Born in 1920, when Germany invaded, Fürstenthal took the path of many Viennese Jews and fled to the United States where he made his living as an accountant. The fact that he had written a few songs in his youth was forgotten but after 35 years, he rediscovered the woman who had been his first love, it rekindled both the flame of love as well as the urge to compose. Hundreds of songs - achingly lovely songs, laden with an autumnal sense of loss - flowed from Fürstenthal's pen from that moment on, preserving the spirit of fin-de-siecle Vienna under the Californian sun. Just before Fürstenthal died in November, 2016, at the age of 96, he had the satisfaction of hearing his songs in these wonderful performances - a last-minute vindication by two young musicians carrying his music into the future.

Polish pianist-composer Tadeusz Majerski (1888-1963) wrote some of the most interesting Polish music of his day, bringing together late-Romantic sensitivity and the harmonic freedom of Schoenbergian modernism- although primacy of emotional expression was always his watchword. Majerski spent his entire life in Lwow (now Lviv in Ukraine) and so, despite his musical importance, he has been almost completely lost from sight. This first album dedicated to his work presents one of his major scores, the rhapsodic Concerto-Poem for piano and orchestra, as well as two powerful chamber works and a number of representative piano miniatures. Michal Drewnowski is the pianist who has discovered Majerski and is making him known to the outside world- a task in which this release is playing its part.

The organ music of Jona (or Juan) Cabanilles is virtuosic and colorfully 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, have not caught up with his output yet. The surviving Cabanilles manuscripts can be seriously corrupt, requiring extensive editing and sometimes even detailed recomposition. This recording uses a number of new editions to present the music as never heard before, as close as possible to what teh composer might hav eintended. Timothy Roberts studied with Christopher Kite and Jill Severs, also receiving master-class tuition from Kenneth Gilbert and Gistav Leonhardt. He worked for over thirty years as a touring keyboardist. In recent years, Roberts has gained experience as a recording engineer and sound editor.

The cello works of the London-born Stephen Dodgson present the musical personality of this much-loved composer in a nutshell. Dodgson's style is direct but rich in allusion with a lively, sometimes brittle, sense of humor, adding a Shostakovich-like irony. The remarkable clarity of the instrumental textures underline a strong sense of narrative, with the cello almost as a human voice, unfolding it's story with understated passion. Evva Mizerska is a cello lecturer at Morley College and Emma Abbate, a professor at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, formed in 2003, the Evva*Emma Duo has performed in many European countries.

The Lithuanian pianist and composer Vytautas Bacevicius (1905-1970) is one of the undiscovered pioneers of the twentieth century. This second volume of his piano music presents works written between 1927 and 1966, most of them receiving their first recording here. This release shows the evolution of his musical language from the post-Scriabin style of the early works. This release takes its place in the extensive - and still growing - representation of Lithuanian music on Toccata Classics.

The French composer Ange Flégier (1846-1927) enjoyed considerable frame in his own time but has now been completely lost from view. The extraordinary reception of his song Le Cor points to the predominant place held by the Melodie in his catalogue of more than 350 works. Flégier's songs, composed for his colleagues at the Opera de Paris, are large-scale and orchestrally conceived, sitting stylistically close to Faure in their unassertive dignity and to Duparc in their sense of scale. Many of them receive their first recordings or first modern recordings here.

Beat Furrer is no stranger to the attention he receives for his subtle exploration of the possibilities of the human voice. Furrer's six Enigmas, a cycle of a cappella settings of Leonardo da Vinci, demonstrates a striking emotional range, from rich, almost romantic tonal warmth to dramatic avant-garde expressionism. All eight works on this new release accentuate Furrer's fondness for exploring sonority, timbre and texture.