In his last years, Giuseppe Tartini (1692–1770) labored at a cycle of sonatas for solo violin. The resulting manuscript offers the most important composition for solo violin after Bach and, at six hours in duration, the largest integrated work for the instrument. Now at Vol. 3, this first complete recording is based on a fresh study of the source and includes a number of works in Tartini’s shorthand, overlooked in earlier editions. “Skærved has a fine sense of Baroque style and an understated virtuosity…” (Infodad) “…one waits impatiently for the series to unfold.” (MusicWeb Int’l)

The Australian-British Sadie Harrison is no ordinary composer: she is also an archaeologist and a professional gardener. So it is hardly surprising that a fascination with historical artifacts and biological processes filters into her music. The instrumental miniatures on this recording are both slow and brutal, some of them mirroring ancient worlds and natural phenomena and others taking their starting point in the paintings of Brian Graham and Peter Sheppard Skærved, expressing visual and textural ideas in sound. All are first recordings.

REVIEW:

Australian-born and UK-based, Sadie Harrison took some time out from composition to work as an archaeologist and professional gardener, activities which nourish these new works, mostly written in the past four years. Her fascination with fragments, minutiae and painted miniatures has resulted in five groups of tiny pieces each lasting around three minutes or less. The shortest is 24 seconds! Gallery (Rooms I and II) for solo violin—19 musical glimpses to be played in any order—takes the paintings of the versatile violinist Peter Sheppard-Skaerved as a starting point. Hidden Ceremonies, for piano, explores prehistory as depicted through paintings by Brian Graham. Musical echoes, from Vaughan Williams to Stravinsky to Aghanistan and beyond, are woven into Harrison’s works, each glittering in their intensity.

-- The Guardian

A contemporary and friend of Rachmaninov, Medtner and other major composer-pianists, Konstantin Romanovich Eiges (1875-1950), was a member of a gifted eastern Ukrainian Jewish family. His music bears the impress of his teacher Taneyev and of Scriabin and has points in common with his aforementioned friends, but deserves to be remembered in it's own right. This first-ever CD dedicated to this unjustly forgotten musical figure features Jonathan Powell, who knows Russian piano music of this period like few other musicians and has a reputation for tackling music of enormous difficulty.

Alexandre Tansman’s fundamental style is Stravinskyan Neo-Classicism animated by the dance-rhythms of his native Poland and energized by a masterly command of counterpoint. The substantial body of music he produced for his own instrument, the piano, has never been systematically examined in recordings. This first installment presents works he wrote soon after his 1919 arrival in Paris, the city that was to remain his home – except for the years of WW II, spent in American exile. Tansman’s music is a special area of academic study and musical exploration for the American pianist Danny Zelibor.

REVIEW:

It is always surprising to be treated to first recordings written as far back as the 1920s and there are three on this disc. It was fascinating to hear them and to read the helpful notes. These highlight what to listen out for among which was an indication that there are echoes of Scriabin among others in Tansman’s experimental 7 Préludes and so there are. In fact that feeling often occurs when Tansman is at his most dreamy creating a state in which fantasy plays a strong role.

The works on this disc seem all the more impressive when one is reminded that they were written when the composer was in his twenties and had another fifty plus years of composition ahead of him. He never wasted any of those years, producing a huge volume of works. He was definitely one of those composers who ‘hit the ground running’ for these early works do not betray any struggle to find his style. His ensuing compositional life was more one of development and refinement.

I’ve always been impressed by Tansman’s works and this disc proves no exception. Danny Zelibor is obviously an enthusiast and can write authoritatively about the music he plays. He gives us compelling performances that will surely win over new fans for this thoroughly decent and principled human being and superlative composer. Toccata continues to shed new light on undeservedly obscure composers and deserve support and thanks from all music-lovers.

-- MusicWeb International

Now almost entirely forgotten, Adolf Jensen (1837-79), one of the major figures of German Romanticism, composed a large corpus of songs and piano music in a language fusing the heritage of Schumann, Chopin and Liszt into an individual style distinguished by it's melodic and lyrical appeal. This first in an important, new series of recordings of Jensen's music features Erling R. Eriksen, Prof. Of piano in the Dept. Of Music and Dance at the Univ. Of Stavanger (Norway). The extensive booklet notes are by one of the experts on 19th c. piano music, Rohan Stewart-McDonald.

Carl Loewe (1796-1869) Is Remembered Today Chiefly As a Composer of Ballads. Yet There Is a Considerable Body of Piano Music That Is Strikingly Innovative in Content, Expression and Harmony. A Major Figure in Ushering in the Romantic Era His Works Contain the Germs of Ideas Later Taken Up By Composers Such As Wagner and Liszt. This Is the First of a Series of Recordings Done in Conjunction with Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne. Linda Nicholson Is One of the Foremost Keyboard Players Specializing in the Performance of Baroque, Classical and Early Romantic Music on Instruments of the Period.

Nikolai Peyko (1916–95) is a major Russian composer completely unknown in the west. He is another composer who wrote nine symphonies, and much other orchestral music besides, but fell foul of the Soviet regime and was sidelined. His piano music shares certain characteristics with both Shostakovich’s and Prokofiev’s, but sounds an individual tone nonetheless. This second and final CD in this complete recording of his piano music is the first time that any of this music has been heard recorded on a western label. Pianists Dmitry Korostelyov and where needed, Maria Dzhemesiuk perform.

Rudolf Tobias (1873–1918) founded the classical-music tradition in Estonia almost single-handedly, writing the first Estonian orchestral piece, the first Estonian string quartet, first Estonian piano concerto and the first Estonian oratorio, the monumental Des Jona Sendung, from which Ines Maidre has now transcribed for organ the blazingly powerful Sanctus. Although Tobias was himself an outstanding organist, he wrote little music for his own instrument and most of it is modest in scale, but its quirky craftsmanship reveals the hand of a master.

REVIEW:

Rudolf Tobias (1873–1918) is credited with founding the classical music tradition in Estonia, having written the first Estonian orchestral piece, piano concerto, piano sonata, oratorio, and string quartet. He studied composition with Rimsky-Korsakoff and then had a wide-ranging career in Tartu, Paris, Munich, Dresden, and finally as Professor of Theory at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik. At the outbreak of war in 1914, he was drafted into the German army, serving as an interpreter. His health began to fail in 1916 and he was discharged, and died of pneumonia in October of 1918.

This program of his complete published organ works reveals a composer of well-crafted, pleasant liturgical “gebrauchsmusik” based on chorale tunes. It is all modest in scope, nothing lasting much over five minutes. It is unfortunate that he left nothing substantial for the organ, as he was considered an outstanding organist. The booklet contains notes on the composer and music as well as the specification of the 1913 Sauer organ (rebuilt in 1998) in the Dome Church (St Mary’s) in Tallinn, Estonia.

-- American Record Guide

The Scottish pianist Ronald Stevenson, now 86, is the Grand Old Man of Scottish music. A composer-performer in the grand tradition of Beethoven, Chopin and Rachmaninov, he has written a huge quantity of music for his own instrument, the piano, ranging from tiny miniatures to his best-known work, the monumental Passacaglia on DSCH. This first of a series of recordings by the young Scottish pianist Christopher Guild, strong advocate of contemporary and lesser- known repertoire, begins with an album inspired by the music of Scotland itself and its Celtic neighbor, Ireland.

Mykola Lysenko (1842–1912) is regarded as ‘the father of Ukrainian classical music’. As did Bartók later in Hungary, he went out into the field, listened to what the people were singing and fashioned an individual musical language that brought together the styles of Chopin and Liszt and the essence of Ukrainian folksong. This first CD of his piano music reveals a voice, long forgotten, of extraordinary immediacy and appeal.

Robert Kahn, born in Mannheim in 1865, was one of the oldest Jewish composers to have to flee Hitler – he left Germany in 1938 and settled in Kent, England, where he died in 1951. He produced a large body of attractive chamber music, expertly crafted and basically Brahmsian in style. His three violin sonatas, written over a twenty-year-period at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th c., reveal a lyrical composer in the Romantic mainstream but capable of considerable formal inventiveness. This is the first recording of these highly attractive works.

Harold Truscott (1914–92) enjoyed a reputation as one of Britain’s most perceptive writers on music, a doughty champion of many neglected composers who have now become familiar figures. Truscott himself was a composer of some stature, writing in an individual style rooted in Beethoven and Schubert but also absorbing influences of Nielsen, Medtner and Hindemith. This is the first CD in a series presenting his substantial corpus of piano music. Ian Hobson, pianist and conductor, began his international career in 1981 when he won First Prize at the Leeds Int’l Piano Competition.

This, the third volume in the Toccata Classics cycle of complete string quartets of David Matthews (b. 1943), contains Matthews’ first three numbered quartets, written between 1969 and 1978, along with an early contrapuntal study and an arrangement of Scriabin. + The Second Quartet, as the composer says, ‘shows the influence of the kind of minimalism in songs by The Velvet Underground, and aims for the energy and dynamism of The Who’. + The Kreutzer Quartet have worked with David Matthews for many years now; many of his quartets were written with them in mind.

Anatoly Alexander (1888–1982) is a forgotten figure of the Russian school of pianism that embraced Taneyev, Rachmaninov, Skryabin, Gilels and so many other composers and pianists. + His fourteen sonatas and much of his work for piano is in an attractive late-Romantic style that owes much to his teacher and friend Nikolai Medtner. + Pianist Kyung-ah Noh (b. 1982, South Korea) ‘plays with immense power when called for, but is equally able to command the subtlest “pianissimo”’ + Continuing, “she has a real empathy for the style of this underrated composer.” (MusicWeb Int’l on Volume 1)

Woldemar Bargiel was the half-brother of Clara Schumann, and given his interest in music, it is not surprising that he became part of the Schumann circle. His compositions were described as pale copies of the great composers, including his brother-in-law, which is perhaps unkind but not entirely unjustified. His later works resist the pull of the late-Romantics, such as Mahler and Strauss, looking to Brahms and back to Beethoven, Haydn and Schubert.

My first encounter with his music was fairly recent, as part of my survey of piano trios. Trio Parnassus have recorded his three piano trios on two MDG CDs, which are now difficult to obtain. You can obtain readily them as downloads, but they do not come with a booklet. I am generally resistant to this situation, especially where the composer is little known, but the samples of the trios that I heard were sufficiently encouraging to persuade me into a purchase. As far as I can tell, this is the first review on this site of Bargiel’s music.

The Prometheus overture was written while Bargiel was studying at Leipzig Conservatory. There is little doubt that it owes much to Beethoven’s similarly named overture, though Liszt’s tone poem Prometheus may also have had some influence. At over eighteen minutes, there is no doubt that it stretches its material too far, but it does have some splendid melodies. The orchestration is not as interesting as the other works presented here.

The premiere of Overture to a tragedy was conducted by Bargiel’s teacher, Julius Rietz, and led Hans von Bülow to write “Bargiel can claim the highest rank among Schumann’s followers after Joseph Joachim”. It was originally titled Overture to Romeo and Juliet, but changed before publication because it simply doesn’t have the emotional depth suited to the play. It has stylistic links to Schumann’s Manfred overture, but is a fine work in its right.

The Medea overture was his big success, with numerous performances around Germany and further afield, and led to his appointment as director of the music school in Rotterdam. The booklet links it to Schumann, though I more hear Mendelssohn. It builds from an ominously quiet opening into a series of increasingly dramatic surges, separated by short darkly lyrical moments. Personally, I prefer the Overture to a tragedy, but I can understand why it was so successful in its time.

The Symphony, with the exception of the second movement, is very much a case of “spot the influence”. The first movement, is very, very Beethovenian: imagine a blend of the fifth, sixth and seventh symphonies. Some of the melodies sound as though they are direct borrowings. The slow second movement is fortunately more original, though it does include what could be construed as a funeral march. It has a number of quite beautiful melodies, and some very appealing orchestral colours from the woodwinds and horns, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The Menuett that follows might be mistaken for an abandoned Schubert piece, while the final Allegro molto owes much to Haydn, though as reorchestrated by Beethoven. Lest I sound too critical, it is worth bearing in mind that Brahms, only five years younger than Bargiel, had not completed his first symphony by this time, and when he did, there was obvious homage to Beethoven in it as well.

In its early days, Naxos was known for using journeyman orchestras from eastern Europe, but even they didn’t go as far as Toccata has done recently, with a number of recordings based in the Siberian city of Omsk. The orchestra goes by two names: the the Omsk Philharmonic Orchestra at home (and on their website) and the Siberian Symphony Orchestra abroad. The performances are well beyond serviceable – I very much doubt we are likely to get another recording of these works soon, but it would take one of the top orchestras to make much more of this music.

The booklet is written by Dean Cáceres, who has written a biography of Bargiel, and hence provides comprehensive and informative notes. The sound quality is excellent, the delicate orchestral colours well defined and the climaxes imposing.

– MusicWeb International (David Barker)

These arrangements for string orchestra of works by Alban Berg take their cue from Berg himself: he arranged three of the six movements of the Lyric Suite for string orchestra; the Dutch composer Theo Verby arranged the other three. The CD includes an arrangement of Berg’s Piano Sonata for strings by Wijnand van Klaveren. Ernst Kovacic arranged Berg’s early works especially for this recording. The arrangements chart Berg’s development as a composer, from prentice pieces composed under the tutelage of Schoenberg to the rich, mature style of one of his masterpieces, the Lyric Suite, written to express an impassioned and illicit love. Ernst Kovacic is one of Austria’s best-known violinists as well as a conductor. Among the composers who have written works for him are Krenek, Holloway, Gruber and Schwertsik. Ernst Kovacic and the NRM Leopoldinum Chamber Orchestra’s previous Toccata release of music by Ernst Krenek (TOCC 0199), was received with universal enthusiasm, the reviewer for Fanfare writing: ‘This Toccata Classics CD is a model of fine production values…(and) magisterial performances…an absolute must for Krenek fanciers’.

REVIEW:

The Lyric Suite is played complete. It gains from the extra players, not only in obvious richness of sound, but in nuances of phrasing. The arrangements accomplish a broad range of expressive tonecolor, with nearly every conceivable string effect on display. In the trickier parts where there are several extremely chromatic legato lines playing against one another, they play accurately and in tune. The album is a curiosity for a limited audience, but they’ll be happy.

-- American Record Guide

Giacomo Facco (1676–1753), born near Venice, was active in southern Italy as violinist, choirmaster and teacher before his appointment to the Spanish royal court c. 1720. Although highly esteemed in his own time, Facco had disappeared from musical history until his Pensieri Adriarmonici were discovered in a Mexican library in 1962. Bright and buoyant, they have much in common with the music of Vivaldi, Albinoni and Facco’s other Venetian contemporaries – but are here given a distinct twist with a basso continuo of vihuela and guitarrón, as they might have been performed in 18th c. Mexico.

The Czech-born pianist and writer August Stradal (1860–1930) – a Bruckner student and Liszt disciple– was one of the more prolific transcribers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He produced a vast quantity of phenomenally difficult piano music, including Liszt’s orchestral works, most of Bruckner’s symphonies, a good deal of the Baroque (a huge amount of Bach) and much more. This is the second in a series presenting his Wagner transcriptions, again featuring pianist Juan Guillermo Vizcarra. “Vizcarra makes a staggeringly powerful case for these transcriptions…” (Music Web Int’l)

The revival of interest in the music of Robin Milford (1903–59) has largely bypassed his exquisite chamber music, an omission this recording seeks to redress. It presents some of his most attractive chamber works, showing his very personal – and very English – combination of melodic freshness, elegiac lyricism and echoes of folksong. The clarinetist Robert Plane has been described as the ‘current occupier of the shoes of the late Thea King in his championship of British clarinet music’. Other notable performers include violinist Lucy Gould, violist David Adams and cellist Alice Neary.

Charles O’Brien (1882–1968) is the archetypical composer for a Toccata Classics release: this CD rescues a forgotten Scottish Romantic from oblivion. O’Brien was a mainstay of musical life in Edinburgh, but his attractive, lyrical muse has long since been lost from view there, let alone anywhere else. His lively music reflects his Scottish heritage, mixing grand gestures with Schumannesque intimacy. This is the first recording in a series to be devoted to the music of Charles O’Brien. Pianist Warren Mailley-Smith studied at the Royal College of Music. He has recorded eight CDs.

Although the instrumental and orchestral music of the Franco-German Romantic Théodore Gouvy (1819–98) is slowly being rediscovered, his songs remain largely unknown. Gouvy’s melodious songs, 105 in number, show a predilection for the 16th c. love-poems of Pierre de Ronsard: 40 of the songs set Ronsard texts. Of the 26 songs on this disc, only eleven have been recorded before, and none in the key the composer intended, as they are here for the first time. The other fifteen songs are first-ever recordings. Pianist Joel Schoenhals accompanies soprano MeeAe Nam and tenor John Elwes.

Richard Stöhr (1874–1967) was yet another Austrian composer driven by the Nazis into American exile. His output– ripe for rediscovery – includes 7 symphonies, 15 violin sonatas among much other chamber music, songs, choral and piano pieces. His two cello and piano works, recorded here in the first of a series of Stöhr CDs, reveal a lyrical and expressive composer downstream from Brahms and Schumann. The disc continues the Toccata’s rediscovery of composers who suffered under the Third Reich.

Ján Cikker (1911–89) was one of the leading 20th c. Slovak composers, credited with no fewer than nine operas. This disc features several first recordings of his piano music, of which little is known even in his native Slovakia. The music sits downstream from Szymanowski and Janáček, like them blending folk influences with French impressionism echoes. As also with Szymanowski, some of the pieces evoke the composer’s fondness for the Tatras, the mountainous borderland between Poland and Slovakia.

Alfred Hitchcock commissioned his film scores from composers who were Hollywood’s master-craftsmen. The concert items prepared from those scores feature a dazzling variety of styles, from Baroque and jazz to dark Romanticism and angular angst, all using the orchestra with breathtaking virtuosity. The conductor John Mauceri, as at home with this repertoire as any other musician, has prepared a number of concert suites from the film scores and some of them receive their first recordings here. This recording was made live in concert in Danish Radio’s new concert hall in Copenhagen. The booklet contains an introductory text by John Mauceri and an extensive, illustrated essay on Hitchcock and his use of film music and work with composers by British film-music historian John Riley.

REVIEWS:

The concert recordings contain some ambient noises and quirks of balance (lots of bass tones). But the pluses are powerful: the orchestra's flair, the vivid colors and audible adrenalin. Even the most dedicated film buff should deepen their appreciation as Hitchkock's composers run the gamut.

– BBC Music Magazine

Hitchcock was the enabler of many hours of orchestral music that are part of the 20th century’s legacy. Herrmann’s scores for Vertigo and Psycho, and Franz Waxman’s for Rear Window, stand out. The Wagnerian Scène d’Amour, from Vertigo, comes over as one of the great slow movements.

– Sunday Times

Franois Couperin’s Concerts Royaux (1722) and Les Nations (1726) use open scoring, indicating that they could be performed by whatever instruments were at hand. + He later confessed that he himself preferred to perform them on two harpsichords. + This suggestion had to wait for these two CDs to be taken up in a recording (the second CD is being readied for future release). + Also presented are a number of his Pices de clavecin, also in rarely heard realizations for two harpsichords.