This CD of Adolf Busch's lyrical writing for clarinet is the first in a series of recordings of his light-filled chamber music in an effort to rediscover one of the leading musicians of his day. Bettina Biegelbeck has appeared as clarinet soloist with a number of orchestras. The Busch Kollegium Karlsruhe was founded by Biegelbeck expressly to make this recording.

Despite being orphaned when he was young, Johann Georg Lickl (1769-1843) was a talented musician who studied with Haydn and Albrechtsberger. This album contains Lickl’s chamber works. His Cassation in E flat major was once thought to have been written by Mozart, which gives an indication of the quality of Lickl’s work. Performing these works are soloists of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestras.

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.

This new series from Toccata Classics presents the music of a composer-conductor from Victorian England who has entirely disappeared from music history. Henry Cotter Nixon (1842-1907) turns out 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 series of three albums presents all his surviving orchestral music in its first-ever recordings. Nixon labeled his five-movement Palamon and Arcite a symphonic poem, and indeed, it is one of the first by a British composer, but in fact, it is more of a programmatic symphony, of the sort then being written by composers such as Goldmark and Raff.

Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer (1656-1746) was a major musician in his home of southern Germany. He was especially known for his French music for organ and harpsichord, the instruments on which he was also a virtuosic performer. His vocal music has been much less recognized. Contrasting his French style of instrumental works, he turns to the Italian style for his vocal pieces. This can be seen in his 1701 Vespers setting, which is recorded here for the first time.+ This release also includes two sonatas by Johann Christoph Pez (1664-1716), another all but forgotten composer.

Presenting Vol.5 in the first complete recording of the 72 cantatas from Telemann’s collection Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst, published in Hamburg, 1726 – they were the first complete set of cantatas for the liturgical year to appear in print.

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.

The English composer John Pickard (b. 1963) is best known for a series of powerful orchestral works, five symphonies among them. But this album of songs – his complete output for voice and piano to date – demonstrates that he can generate drama on a smaller scale, too. These settings – of two less familiar poets of the First World War, often exploring man’s relationship with nature, and a translation of a ninth-century Anglo-Saxon phantasmagorical allegory – encompass a wide range of moods, requiring soaring vocal lines, declamatory authority and the gentlest intimacy, supported by piano textures that can flare up in freewheeling virtuosity.

This fifth album in the Toccata Classics survey of the chamber music of London-born Stephen Dodgson (1924-2013) offers a second installment of his many works for woodwinds, as well as a duo for the unusual combination of horn and harp. Much of it brings Dodgson's sense of fun to the fore, often through rhythmic mischief or an insouciance that recalls Poulenc. It can have a spiky vivacity that suggests Jan�cek, too, and a hint of Baroque formality - but it also has that particularly English strain of lyricism that suggests the impermanence of beauty.

Gregory Rose (b. 1948) absorbed the English choral tradition from his father, the Oxford conductor and composer Bernard Rose, expanding that inheritance with the techniques of European and American modernism, acquired in part during his own conducting career. This conspectus of over four decades of choral music presents a vivid combination of original compositions and agreeable arrangements, sung here with exultant virtuosity by one of Europe's leading choirs, conducted by Gregory Rose himself. Gregory Rose has been composing since the late 1960s, his catalogue including nearly twenty settings of the Mass. His music-theatre work Danse macabre, completed in 2011 and released on Toccata Classics was described by one reviewer as 'an absorbing musical masterpiece.' He has worked with orchestras, ensembles, and choirs throughout Europe and the Far East, particularly in Romantic and contemporary repertoire, and he has conducted hundreds of careers.

An-lun Huang, born in Guang Zhou, Guangdong, in 1949, and a resident of Toronto since 1986, survived the hardships of the Cultural Revolution to make his mark as pianist and composer both in China and in the west. In his piano music he is concerned to find a meeting ground between the piano as a western instrument and his own roots as a Chinese musician. This album shows the cross-fertilisation going in both directions, with a lively dance suite from a ballet nspired by the ancient cave art in Dunhuang, in western China, and the universal figure of Bach stimulating a substantial set of polyphonic compositions where western harmonies are refracted through Chinese colors.

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.

With the political opening-up of Cuba comes a project aiming to throw light on Cuba's forgotten musical legacy. Cuba's heritage of classical music is composed largely of three strands - the inheritance of colonial times and the subsequent influence of African and European musicians - but even after three hundred years of development, most Cuban composers remain unknown to international audiences. Most of the pieces on this release are salon works that blend Chopin and Gottschalk to charm the listener, but Comella's ambitions also went further, with the first sonata published by any Cuban composer.

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.

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.