Czech-born composer Antoine Reicha (1770-1836) was an extremely influential influence on composers of the late 19th century. His own compositions, however, fell into obscurity in the shadows of his contemporaries Haydn and Beethoven. This release, compiling Reicha’s complete piano works, displays his usage of both Baroque compositional practices and of compositional practices that would look forward into the twentieth century. An international authority on the piano works of Reicha, Henrik Lowenmark is a Stockholm-based musician who is active as a solo artist, accompanist, and chamber musician.

Nashville-based Cristina Spinei (b. 1984) is a Latin Grammy nominated composer, who has consistently remained in high demand by choreographers, musicians, and film directors. Spinei is frequently commissioned by ensembles such as the Bohemian Trio, Denison University Orchestra, Gallim Dance, London Central School, the Metropolis Ensemble, New York Chamber Music Festival, and the Pacific Northwest Ballet, to name a few. The works on this release were all composed for dance, and include four string quartets, a duet for cello and percussion, and a piece for string orchestra. All of the pieces pulse with rhythmic energy and convey the American minimalist tradition. On the piece “Bootleg Sugar Lips,” which is included in this album, one reviewer writes: “[Bootleg Sugar Lips] was solidly minimalist in its aesthetic with a keen sense of large-scale form… Spinei was effective in creating enticing patterns and then drawing attention to a particular part, thereby creating a sense of large-scale melody and individual voices within a full texture…” (David Pearson of I Care if You Listen)

This release is a joint project between American string sextet Cuatro Puntos and student ensembles from Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM), opened in Kabul in 2010 after a period of Taliban rule in which instruments were destroyed and musicians were outlawed. The special goal of ANIM is on supporting the most disadvantaged members of Afghan society, many students are orphans and street vendors. Cuatro Puntos is based in Hartford, Connecticut. The ensemble is a non-profit organization centered around global peace and cooperation achieved through the writing, teaching and performance of music across the world. The title work is by composer Sadie Harrison; in recognition of her unique integration of modern composition and traditional Afghan folk music, she was given the honor of being named a Visiting Fellow at Goldsmiths, London. This album is the result of her time there. The Rosegarden of Light alternates between interludes performed by the Ensemble Zohra, the ANIM all-girls ensemble and fantasies on their material performed by Cuatro Puntos. "At a time when we are bombarded every day by images of the world in crisis, The Rosegarden of Light is a joyful celebration of musicians who share a fundamental right to express themselves through the universal language of music." - Blackmore Vale Magazine

REVIEW:

Music can mean many things to different people and to some it can mean everything. Music can represent religious beliefs, create political conversations, and preserve the cultural aspects of a civilization. Now imagine living in a place where music has been heavily censored since the 1970s, a ban on instrumental music wasn’t lifted until 2001, and the first performance of a decades old children’s book moved people to tears because they thought the songs were lost. This is Afghanistan. This is the importance of the “Rosegarden of Light” release.

The liner notes tell of books about Afghan music and its history and a website to view videos of performers. The performances are lively and solid, mostly a mix of Indian, Persian, and Pashtun, with some strongly influenced by western music. The music isn’t the most difficult, but simply having groups like the ANIM Junior Ensemble of Traditional Afghan Instruments playing folk songs and the all-female Ensemble Zohra existing at all is a major accomplishment. The US string sextet Cuantro Puntos does the heavy lifting on the culturally mixed pieces, and the collaborative works turn an already important musical release into something even greater.

-- Fanfare

Of the three pianist-composers represented here as composers only Levitzki and Friedman have an extensive recorded legacy as executants. By comparison Gabrilowitsch, who also conducted the Detroit Symphony, seems to have been neglected when it came to the recording studio. Levitzki commanded his own series on Naxos (Volume 1 ~ Volume 2 ~ Volume 3) while the same label also celebrated Friedman with similar splendor (Volume 1 ~ Volume 2 ~ Volume 3 ~ Volume 4).

Trust Toccata Classics to approach these three names from one of the golden ages of pianism from an unaccustomed angle. All three wrote piano music under the nurturing that being a great world-touring pianist brings. Levitzki's haughty Valse de concert - one of many waltzes from his pen - has plenty of sentimental fancy in play. There's a touching Valse in A Major, a slow motion swirling Arabesque Valsante and a nice Valse Tzigane. The dance theme continues with a Meissen china Gavotte, a trilling and tear-unfocused Enchanted Nymph and a Dance of the Doll that bears the stamp of ragtime.

There's not a lot of Gabrilowitsch but it is classy. The Romance is touching and perfumed with a romance that sweeps along in Chopin-like grandeur. A deliberate pulse is often favored and this seems to imply cool calculation rather than anything impulsive. The Gavotte, rather like the one by Levitzki, has a predictably antique surface. The Feuillet is successful - a vehicle for the finer emotions; nothing cheap and nothing melodramatic.

I was less impressed with the Friedman arrangements. The four offered up seem prettified and of them only the Couperin, with its grace-note delights and ice-palace fantasy, holds the attention. The disc concludes with no fewer than eleven original works by Friedman. The four Preludes are impressive: No. 1: subtle with delicately chiming dissonances and a sleepy sign-off; No. 2: alive with swirling activity; No. 3: bell-tower Rachmaninov echoes but too short-breathed and No. 4: a quick pulsed and capricious brevity. The selection of Études include a trillingly liquid charmer (No.1 ), an exercise in rapid tremolo (No. 2), a luxuriously emotional essay presented in velvet (No. 4), a sentimental Allegro, con abandono (No. 9), a Godowsky-style study in decorative intricacy, a stormy tempest of the heart, very much in the Rachmaninovian manner (No. 11); likewise the final one (No. 16).

This very well-packed CD is further evidence that Toccata continues to enrich the classical listening experience with unexpected perspectives. Where Toccata lead others may follow. Not everything from these three contemporaries has striking musical substance but there is much to impress and where it does not impress it certainly delights.

– MusicWeb International (Rob Barnett)

David DeBoor Canfield is not only a composer, he is also an author, critic, editor, annotator, publisher, recording producer, researcher, archivist, violinist, scholar, theologian, and professor at a pastors’ college. For the last decade, Canfield has taken on the project of his ‘After’ Series- that is, composing pieces in the style of other composers. Canfield’s first work in this series is featured on this disc- Concerto after Gliere. The piece for alto saxophone and orchestra was completed in 2007, and has been performed over 100 times throughout the world. In addition to Concerto after Gliere, this release also contains Concerto after Tchaikovsky and Rhapsody after Gershwin. On composing after other people, Canfield writes, “although I don’t have the slightest delusion about being another Tchaikovsky, Gershwin or Gliere, since I have the technique to fill these gaps and am willing to do so, why not? […] If my music in whatever style brings enjoyment to performers and audiences, I shall be satisfied, and grateful to God.”

Known across Europe as “The Saxon,” Johann Adolph Hasse was extraordinarily popular as an operatic composer. Written for private performance in aristocratic palaces, his chamber cantatas gained him fame among the most wealthy and powerful, and are featured on this new recording. Early- music ensemble Hof-Musici specializes in period instrumentation and performance of Baroque music.

This album is the fourth release in a series of orchestral recordings by Hungarian composer Ferenc Farkas (1905-2000). The album focuses on his compositions for strings and flute. These works have all the transparent scoring, driving rhythms, and hearkening to Baroque-style dance forms that make Neo-Classical music so appealing. Flutist Andras Adorjan is featured on this album, alongside Viktoria Herencsar on cimbalom. Janos Rolla also leads the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra on this recording.

The music of the Swiss pianist-composer Emil Frey (1889-1946) reflects the stages of his career: studies with Faur�, friendship with Enescu, teaching in pre-Revolutionary Russia and mature familiarity with developments back in western Europe. This first survey of his music also reveals a virtuoso's understanding of the piano and a sense both of drama and of fun.

The Lithuanian Vladas Jakubenas (1904–78) is one of a lost generation of Baltic composers. A student of Schreker in Berlin, he returned home to help build the musical culture of his country. But the Nazi invasion and Soviet occupation drove him into exile and, after five years in refugee camps in Germany, he settled in Chicago, playing an important role in the Lithuanian diaspora in North America. These choral songs show the deep identification of his late-Romantic style with the folk-music of the land he was forced to leave behind.

The Russian composer Grigori Frid (1915–2012), whose long life encompassed the entire existence of the Soviet Union, is best known for his 1969 chamber opera The Diary of Anne Frank. His sizable output, which has yet to be properly explored, includes three major works for viola and piano, their dignified restraint and emotional honesty taking the late works of Shostakovich as their stylistic starting point. They are followed by In Memoriam Grigori Frid, a touching tribute by Alexander Vustin (b. 1943) to his former teacher.

REVIEW:

Grigori Frid’s long life was marked by political turbulence and unease. His father had been sentenced to a five-year period in a vicious labor-camp in 1927 but the family survived intact. Frid was a teacher and educator, a disseminator of contemporary music and a composer of wide gifts whose portfolio includes three symphonies, numerous chamber works, and choral music as well as a raft of incidental, theater and radio works.

His complete viola music is the subject of this disc. Frid admired the instrument for its qualities of ‘reflection and contemplation’ as he related to the violist in this disc, Elena Artamonova, who gave the British premiere of the Viola Sonata No.1 in 2011. The work dates from 1971. The viola opens solo, and muted, revealing a Fridian fusion of lyricism and austerity with hints of March elements too. The central movement is a fast one, opening attaca, toccata-like and full of verve. The slow finale – the ground plan is vaguely Prokofiev-like – opens with a free cadenza, the piano cushioning or commenting quietly on the viola’s inexorable ascent to its highest register and silence.

The Sonata No.2 followed in 1985. Its subject matter is the Greek myth of Phaedra and it’s cast in four movements. There is appropriately somber tolling embedded in the work, and a heavily oppressive atmosphere, though Frid also embraces polystylism, introducing a stylized Baroque dance into the second movement, Music in a Palace, which is then subjected to much development and fragmentation. The Catharis movement takes the viola very high and introduces an element of equilibrium before the tolling finale of the Epilogue leads the viola to meander amidst the lament and reiteration of the opening movement. Some elements here suggest Shostakovich’s influence but this stoically aloof piece need not be seen as part of that lineage; it stands on its own feet. The Six Pieces (1975) are little character sketches, strong on sul ponticello, off-kilter dancing, interrupted dialogues, some tart dissonance and a highly developed sense of introversion, perfectly exemplified by the concluding Lento.

Talking of conclusions, that marks the end of Frid’s viola music. The disc is rounded out with his pupil Alexander Vustin’s In Memoriam Grigori Frid, composed in 2014. In two movements it builds strongly, through a quietly complex structure, to produce a work of weighted gravity whose lyricism formulates into a kind of somber refraction. It’s a fine salute from student to teacher.

Both Artamonova and Christopher Guild have recorded before for Toccata. She recorded Grechaninov and Vasilenko, whilst Guild has recorded Ronald Center and Ronald Stevenson. Together they make a fine team, though the violist has in the past more usually been paired with Nicholas Walker, who accompanied her in the two discs just mentioned. The recording is well-balanced and the notes – by the violist – are full of important biographical and musical information.

– MusicWeb International (Jonathan Woolf)

Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst (1812-65) was one of the leading musicians of his day, a friend of Berlioz, Chopin, Liszt and Mendelssohn, and for Joseph Joachim 'the greatest violinist I ever heard'. But the popular encore pieces by which Ernst is remembered today represent only a fraction of his output. This fifth CD - in series of seven presenting all his compositions for the first time - shows his mastery on large and small scale: the Polonaise and Variations on a Dutch Air are grand and brilliant compositions for the concert hall, and the sparkling operatic miniatures and tender arrangements are altogether more intimate.

For most of the past century the Russian composer Leonid Sabanayev (1881-1968) was known principally as a writer, not least for his publications on his close friend Alexander Skryabin (he was also a scientist and mathematician). It is only now that his own music is being rediscovered. This first recording of his monumental Piano Sonata, 'In Memory of Skryabin', cast in a single movement half an hour in length, is prefaced by a number of characteristic miniatures.

It’s encouraging to see more and more of Joseph-Guy Ropartz’s music being recorded, as a casual glance at Amazon reveals. Timpani have led the way in promoting this unsung and largely forgotten composer; a couple of years ago I reviewed a delightful CD of instrumental music. I’m particularly fond of the five symphonies, a good starting point, and the six string quartets are similarly worth exploring. It’s promising that Toccata, a label to be lauded for its ventures off the beaten track, has now taken up the cause with this new release of the composer’s piano music; ‘first recordings’, as it states on 'the tin'.

Ropartz lived a long life into his nineties. He was born in Guingamp, Côtes-d'Armor, Brittany, into a wealthy family. He started off on the path of law but in 1885 entered the Paris Conservatory, where he studied harmony with Theodore Dubois and composition with Jules Massenet. It was around this time that he struck up a friendship with the Romanian composer Georges Enescu. In 1887 he entered the organ class of César Franck. In 1894 he moved to Nancy in the east of France, where he became director of the Conservatory, a post he held for the next twenty-five years. This was followed by a ten year stint (1919-29) in a similar position in Strasbourg. Retiring in 1929, he went on composing until 1953, when he was struck down with blindness. He died two years later.

Opening the disc is the suite Dans l’ombre de la montagne, the most substantial work here. The sombre narrative extends across all seven movements, with recurring motives throughout, providing an idée fixe. Ropartz takes his lead from Vincent d’Indy’s Poème des Montagnes, Op.15 and Promenades, Op. 7 by Albéric Magnard, both of which have been recorded by McCallum. She suggests that Ropartz makes direct reference to the d’Indy work in his title. The music throughout is generally of a bleak, thoughtful and reflective persuasion, with some respite being provided by the more animated and cheery fifth movement, marked ‘Ronde’. Stephanie McCallum’s performance of intensity and rhetorical eloquence has exceptional appeal.

Originally conceived as an orchestral work for the Paris Opera Ballet in 1929, Un Prélude Dominical et six pièces à danser pour chaque jour de la semaine is cast in a more joyous and optimistic vein than the previous work. The ballet characterizes each day of the week with its associated activities. The score showcases Ropartz’s more impressionistic style, and the music is awash in colour which McCallum imaginatively conveys in this piano arrangement which the composer made in 1930. I particularly like the reflective contrasts in Jeudi, the fifth movement. The jaunty swagger of Samedi brings this alluring suite to a close.

The Choral varié of 1904 clearly shows a Franckian influence, almost taking its lead from Franck’s organ chorales. Indeed, the piece was arranged for organ by Ropartz’s student and later colleague at Nancy, Louis Thirion. It consists of four variations on a chorale, each separated by a fermato, whose duration is stipulated by the composer. Having listened to the work several times, I can imagine its character more successfully expressed on the organ. The final two pieces La chanson de Marguerite: Caprice Valse and First-Love: Bluette of 1886, predate the composer’s contact with Franck. These seductively lyrical pieces have an endearing intimacy. McCallum's performances encapsulate the affability, genteel charm and captivating essence of these beguiling miniatures.

These are winning performances, warmly recorded, and make a strong case for both the attractiveness and quality of this composer’s music. Stephanie McCallum’s enthusiastic advocacy adds to the success of the mix. Peter McCallum’s detailed annotations, in English only, provide fascinating and informative background. Will there be any more of Ropartz’s piano music to come? Let's keep our fingers crossed.

– MusicWeb International (Stephen Greenbank)

These orchestral songs by the English composer Michael Csanyi-Wills - best known for his film music - all deal with the subject of loss. In Three Sogns: Budapest, 1944 Csanyi-Wills uses documentation from his own family history to shadow the fat of Hungary's Jews under the Nazis. One of them, "The Last Letter", sets a text written by his great-grandmother before she disappeared. Mortality is an omnipresent theme in A.E. Houseman's Shropshire Lad poems: Csanyi-Wills sets six songs, three for baritone and three for tenor. Elegy for Our Time sets an anguished lament by Jessica d'Este, sparked by death of her granddaughter in a car crash. Csanyi-Wills responds to the stimulus of these dark texts with music that is hauntingly lyrical and elegiac.

Toccata Classics continues their overview of the Edinburgh composer Charles O'Brien (1882-1968) with Volume Two of his complete piano works featuring the young British pianist Warren Mailley-Smith. O'Brien's compositions reflected his heritage along with his Romantic era influences.

Born in 1934, the Czech jazz composer Milan Dvořák, no relation to his better-known classical composer namesake, has been active since the 1960s leading big bands and swing ensembles and remains active today. This is the debut recording of his 45 Jazz Piano Etudes which combine transcriptions of popular songs with classical influences and features the pianist Milan Franěk.

Toccata Classics continues its exploration of the music of Hungarian composer Ferenc Farkas (1905–2000) with this selection from his huge choral music output. It ranges in mood from the folk-like simplicity of the Missa Secunda in honorem Sanctae Margaritae and his bright carol settings via the astringency of some late a cappella pieces to the fresh and buoyant Christmas Cantata. This recording is also the first by the new London-based chamber choir Ascolta founded in 2015 by Peter Broadbent, one of Britain’s leading choral conductors, known for his consistent commitment to contemporary music.-- S

REVIEW:

Ferenc Farkas (1905–2000) was a beloved professor at the Budapest Academy of Music and a composer whose music had eluded me up to now. I am glad to make his acquaintance because he wrote classy, charming fare that doesn’t have to work overtime to make its points. Several of these works are accorded their first-ever recordings by Maestro Broadbent’s Ascolta Ensembles, and we are the better for their efforts.

Farkas’s 12-minute Mass is an affectionate, straightforward take on the liturgy. (I’d love to sing it someday.) The carols and ‘Ave Maris Stella’ are the true charmers of the set. The Emmaus Cantata after St Luke is made of sterner stuff and is also worth getting to know.

-- American Record Guide

The composer Fernando Lopes-Graça (1906–94) was something of a Portuguese Shostakovich: as a committed socialist, he faced repression from Portugal’s rightist military dictatorship; his works were banned and he was stripped of his official positions. Lopes-Graça responded in music, evolving a feisty, wiry Bartókian style that drew on Portuguese folk-music. This recording features Lopes-Graça’s own Bechstein piano, played by Olga Prats, who worked closely with him. Reviewing Vol. 1, Fanfare stated: “… the disc should be heard by 20th c. music lovers… a strong, individual voice”.

REVIEW:

Lopes-Graça’s First String Quartet won the Rainier III Composition Prize in 1965 and the composer then began to receive some of the public recognition he deserved. Eventually, some of his symphonic works were recorded. In the 1970s his writings were published and he was honored for his contributions to Portuguese culture. He composed a great many pieces during the last 20 years of his life, one of which is his Second String Quartet. The second movement contains a folk dance that extends into a rhythmic dialogue with dramatic overtones and a propulsive undercurrent. The third movement, “Cavatina,” is an aria with a long melodic line but without the cabaletta that would follow it in a bel canto opera. The finale includes material from the first movement as well as new music in a memorable whirl of interesting textures. This disc is a must for connoisseurs of 20th-century music and those who love unusual string quartets. I really enjoyed it and expect others so inclined will too.

-- Fanfare

This collection of Gabriel Fauré’s mélodies is the first recording to be conceived for a bass voice. It juxtaposes some of the composer’s best-loved songs with some of his lesser-known works. This recital program draws out connections of poets and poetic themes, some of which restore the composer’s own original groupings. This is also the first recording to be based on the new Peters Edition, which eliminates countless errors in older publications. The young American bass Jared Schwartz received the 2013 ‘People’s Choice’ Award in the American Traditions Vocal Competition.

REVIEW:

There are a total of 25 songs on this disc and each of them has been recorded with care and affection for the music of this wonderful French songwriter. Schwartz’s excellent new recording on Toccata gives us pristine sound; it is a recording that should be in the collection of everyone who loves French song.

-- Fanfare

A member of the Society for Jewish Folk Music in St Petersburg, Russia, Leo Zeitlin (1884–1930) was known almost exclusively for Eli Zion, a classic of Jewish art-music. Zeitlin died only seven years after emigrating to New York, still a young man, and his reputation languished until the recent discovery of a trunk full of scores brought his music back to light. This album attempts to remedy decades of neglect, especially for his charismatic Yiddish song-settings for voice, strings and piano, powerful declamations of spoken Yiddish and Russian poetry underscored by Romantic piano music, all of which points to a once popular but now forgotten genre. The Festival musicians of the Pittsburgh Jewish Music Festival are the highest-caliber local professionals; players for the orchestral and chamber-music concerts include members of the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Pittsburgh Opera and Ballet Orchestras, and university faculty members. In its eleven seasons since its founding by cellist Aron Zelkowicz the PJMS has programmed over 130 pieces of classical chamber and orchestral music inspired by Jewish traditions. The recordings on this CD series represent a six-year project devoted to the St Petersburg Society for Jewish Folk Music and its affiliated Russian composers.

REVIEW:

The performances of Leo Zeitlin’s music are first-rate from start to finish, as is the recorded sound. The liner notes by Paula Eisenstein Baker (a key figure in the resurrection of the Zeitlin’s music) and Robert S. Nelson provide detailed information on the composer’s life and the featured works. Original language texts (Cyrillic script for Russian, and transliterations for the Yiddish poems) and English translations are provided for each of the songs. While the repertoire on this disc may have a less broad appeal than the Stutschewsky release, I think anyone at all curious to explore the work of Leo Zeitlin will not be disappointed.

-- Fanfare

This is the sixth CD in the first complete recording of the 72 cantatas in Georg Philipp Telemann’s collection Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst, published in Hamburg in 1726 – the first complete set of cantatas for the liturgical year to appear in print. The cantatas are designated for voice, an obbligato instrument (recorder, violin, transverse flute or oboe) and basso continuo, and generally take the form of two da capo arias with an intervening recitative. Telemann’s cantatas are a masterly blend of tunefulness with skilled counterpoint and vocal and instrumental virtuosity.

Adolfo Fumagalli (1828–56), one of four musician brothers from Inzago, near Milan, made a name for himself across Europe as ‘the Paganini of the piano’, astonishing audiences with dazzling technique and acquiring a reputation for performances using his left hand alone. Fumagalli composed a large body of piano music – over 100 opus numbers – many being operatic fantasies and virtuosic studies of the type presented in this anniversary recital given in his home town. The CD also features several virtuoso studies from the set of 24 in Fumagalli’s École du pianiste modern, published in Paris in 1854.

The ability of record companies to spring surprises on the public is always pleasant, and here Toccata Classics gives us the opportunity to hear what must be one of the very first American symphonies. Leopold Damrosch is almost unknown nowadays, but his son Walter was for many years the principal conductor of the New York Philharmonic, and the father himself also conducted that body giving the American premières of the Brahms First Symphony and the Berlioz Requiem. Damrosch left Germany for the USA in 1871 and remained there for the remaining thirteen years of his life, during which time he wrote this four-movement symphony; but he never heard it played, and it remained unpublished and in manuscript until 2005 when it was finally edited for performance. This recording was made immediately following the première on 8 February 2015, and it reveals a fascinating if uneven work.

It is unfortunate that the disc begins with the Festival Overture written immediately before Damrosch’s departure for America and dedicated to Georg II, the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen. The booklet note discerns some influences of Wagner, especially Die Meistersinger; but any Wagnerian overtones are less than immediately apparent, bearing comparison (if at all) to some of the overblown marches that Wagner wrote for cash towards the end of his career. The tone is unremittingly loud and overblown; and that impression is reinforced by a closely observed recording in a claustrophobic acoustic which serves only to emphasize the thick brass writing and Damrosch’s reliance on busy string figuration which sometimes fails to achieve an ideal balance, shading into pure decoration. After the symphony the disc concludes with Damrosch’s orchestration of Schubert, a piece which the booklet informs us was popular with American audiences during the composer’s lifetime, but which rarely rises about the workaday.

No, the real piece of interest on this disc is the unpublished and previously unperformed symphony, and I mean no disrespect to the young players here when I say that one can imagine a better case being made out for the work. I have already noted the claustrophobic acoustic — like a confined broadcasting studio. We should also note the questionable balances which bring out the heavy brass at the expenses of the strings (and especially the violins), although these are not as serious in the symphony as in the more stridently scored other items on the disc. The playing is not always impeccable — there appears to be a split horn note very near the opening of the first movement, or at least an appoggiatura which fails to sound convincing — and although one can hear that the violins are working hard and achieving commendable degrees of accuracy they remain overshadowed by the sonorous trumpets and trombones. The woodwind playing, on the other hand, is superbly executed and well observed by the recording. Add to this the committed conducting of Christopher Russell, and booklet notes which are both informative and substantial, and we have here an issue which is of rather more than purely documentary interest. I am amazed that the composer’s son failed to program the symphony with the New York Philharmonic when he was their conductor – maybe he was unaware of its existence – but its revival is decidedly welcome. Perhaps American professional orchestras might care to look at it now that Azusa Pacific have broken the trail.

The conductor’s own booklet essay makes much of the parallels between the music of Damrosch and that of Wagner and Brahms, but the echoes seem to me to be much closer to Bruckner especially in the more atmospheric pages. The opening quiet string tremolos conjure up a definitely Brucknerian feel, and the episodic construction of the rest of the movement also has traces of that composer — but would Damrosch have heard any of the symphonies? The short second-movement Intermezzo is charming; and the solemn march of the third movement builds to a tremendous climax, crowned by a stroke on the gong, and including some positively manic episodes. After this lengthy movement, the most extended in the symphony, the finale is comparatively brief and conventional. As I have already observed Christopher Russell, whose explorations of rare repertory have included first American performances of symphonies by Havergal Brian and Robert Simpson, clearly relishes the music and manages to make it cohere even when it is at its most waywardly rhapsodic.

One more minor cause for complaint in this disc is the ridiculously short breaks between individual tracks – not just between movements in the symphony, but at the beginning and end of that work as well. The result is that the atmospheric slow introduction sounds almost like an odd sort of continuation of the raucous Festival Overture; and even more seriously, the arrival of the Schubert arrangement comes as a real shock immediately after the closing bars of the symphony’s finale. The listener will need to stand by the pause button at these points, but otherwise Toccata’s presentation is impeccable. This label’s restless exploration of the outermost fringes of the repertory is always fascinating, and the Damrosch symphony here deserves rather more than polite intellectual interest.

– MusicWeb International (Paul Corfield Godfrey)

The other three pieces have all received previous recordings but that doesn’t lessen the interest when they are presented as persuasively as they are here by Stanislav Khristenko. The Piano Sonata No.4 dates from 1948 and is a four-movement work of powerfully contained expression. The conjunction, in the slow movement, of both extrovert and more interior gestures is amplified by Krenek’s precise application of sonorous incident – brief but telling – amidst a generally refined tonal color. Marked con passione this is the work’s core but the Rondo offers a rather whimsical example of Krenek’s sort-of modified Boogie patterns with the Jazz references powerfully engaged. His ear for the vernacular was, after all, long practiced. The finale is a Minuet, perhaps surprisingly – perhaps that’s the point – and its variations, one or two a touch crepuscular, or withdrawn, mark a telling way to end the sonata.

The George Washington Variations, Op.120 followed two years later, the result of a commission from a wealthy Los Angeles businessman for his daughter. This genial and clever set of variations takes in the ballroom and subjects its material to deconstruction and reconstruction, as the notes suggest, with much playfulness. Washington’s Grand March is a central focus, and subject to pithy and witty examples of lightly applied atonalism, jazz-hinting rhythms and much more. Playfully ironic in places it in no way outstays its thirteen-minute length. The brief two-minute Prelude packs quite a punch for so short a piece. As Peter Tregear notes in his excellent booklet, the application of twelve-tone is accomplished here with the utmost of lyricism.

The final piece is Krenek’s completion of Schubert’s Sonata in C major, D840, which he wrote in 1921, just less than a century after Schubert had left it a torso. The first two movements had been completed as had the trio of the Menuetto and the first 272 bars of the finale. It was the pianist Eduard Erdmann, a prominent musician then and later, who encouraged Krenek to take Schubert more seriously. In time he came to understand and share Erdmann’s enthusiasm and undertook a study of the composer’s work. His completion of the sonata is a valuable sidelight to his interests at the time and also of his application of compositional process. As Krenek wrote: ‘in both unfinished movements the thematic material was completely established…so Schubert was [not] still composing by proxy, as it were, but I had only to use my knowledge of, and feeling form Schubert’s style and technique in order to supply what he might have done. I think I did a fairly creditable job.’ He noted that the finale might have been longer had Schubert actually gone through with it.

Given the quality of this inaugural volume we can look forward to the second volume with confidence.

– MusicWeb International (Jonathan Woolf)

Adolf Busch (1891–1952) enjoys a reputation as one of the great violinists: his Busch Quartet Beethoven recordings have never been surpassed. But Busch was also a major composer, equally natural as contrapuntist and melodist, with a style that owed much to Max Reger. Yet, always a man of principle, he sacrificed his career as both violinist and composer with his dignified refusal to perform or be performed in Nazi Germany. This second CD of his lyrical writing for clarinet, one in a series of recordings of Busch’s light-filled chamber music, extends the rediscovery of this once leading musician.