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.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Some composers - Enescu, Schumann and Szymanowski among them - have had a go at adding piano accompaniments to Paganini's 24 Capricci for solo violin, and there are arrangements for any number of instrumental combinations. The Ukrainian Myroslav Skoryk (b. 1938) is the first composer to orchestrate all 24 of them, turning Paganini's virtuosic violin-writing into a succession of symphonic fireworks, and often injecting a touch of humor along the way. This recording is released to mark Myroslav Skoryk's 80th birthday, and is the first of a series of collaborations planned between Toccata Classics and the Lviv International Symphony Orchestra in Lviv, western Ukraine. Alexander Zemtsov has been performing as a solo violist since the age of fifteen. At the age of 23 he was appointed Principal Viola of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2012, after ten years with the Orchestra, he left to dedicate himself entirely to his demanding career as soloist, conductor and chamber musician. In 2014 he made his conducting debut with the Lviv International Symphony Orchestra, and the next year was appointed artistic director and principal conductor of the orchestra.

Harpist to Queen Victoria, the Welsh composer John Thomas (1826–1913) was also a prolific composer for his own instrument, writing works both for solo harp and for duos of two harps or harp and piano – a combination where the different sounds of the two instruments enhances the clarity of the texture. Thomas’ original works use the elegant Romantic style of his own day, but he often drew on Welsh folksong for his inspiration and also left a generous legacy of transcriptions, especially of operatic favorites. Duo Praxedis comprises the harpist Praxedis Hug-Rütti and the pianist Praxedis Geneviève Hug. Together they have been enchanting audiences for many years. Duo Praxedis’s mission is to revive the once popular repertory for harp and piano that flourished from about 1780 until about 1915. Since 2010 Duo Praxedis has been performing regularly throughout Europe and the United States, invariably with great success.

Joly Braga Santos (1924–88) was one of the most important composers in twentieth-century Portugal. In his early works his fondness for modal harmony, absorbed from the Portuguese masters of the Renaissance, and his busy counterpoint combine to make him sound surprisingly close to such particularly English composers as Vaughan Williams and Moeran. Although his harmonic language became more astringent with time, it retained a burly sense of humor and a powerful charge of energy. In these recordings Portugal’s premier string quartet is joined in the Braga Santos Sextet by the composer’s daughter on viola. This is the first release in a series of three which will present – for the first time ever – Braga Santos’ complete chamber music.

Like Korngold, Toch, Schoenberg, Zeisl and Zemlinsky, Richard St�hr (1874-1967) was one of many Austrian composers driven into American exile by the Nazis. His generous output of music, being rediscovered at last in these Toccata Classics recordings, includes seven symphonies, much chamber music, songs, and choral and piano pieces. His output for organ is not extensive, but it's quality is high: the instrument plays an important role in a number of St�hr's orchestral works, and here St�hr presents the organ in two thoroughly attractive duos and an imposing solo sonata. The Sonata and Intermezzi sit downstream from Brahms in the tradition of Viennese classicism; the chromatic touches in the later Suite lean towards the language of Korngold.

As pianist, writer and academic, Peter Dickinson – Lancashire-born in 1934 – has been one of the mainstays of British musical life for decades. Alongside these activities he is also a highly regarded composer, whose music, reconciling modernism and tradition, speaks directly to its listeners. This album presents works from the earlier part of his career, with an expressive range between delicate lyricism and wild, freewheeling energy, animated by a keen sense of instrumental drama. This recording was made with the composer and performers in close collaboration.

Niklas Sivelov (born in northern Sweden in 1968) is one of the leading representatives of the once-familiar tradition of pianist-composer that first achieved prominence with Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin and continued through Rachmaninov and Bartók. But Sivelov also has a sizable, and growing, body of orchestral music to his name. These three recent works reveal a style that balances delicacy of feeling and freewheeling energy, with something of Stravinsky’s sense of rhythmic mischief, the vernal vigor of Tippett, just occasionally the harmonic density of Ligeti, and the unusual awareness of light and dark that characterizes the music of Sibelius and other Nordic composers.

Although much of the music of the Dutch composer Hendrik Andriessen (1892-1981) has now been explored in recordings, his works for piano largely remain to be discovered. This first conspectus of his piano music covers fifty years of composition, showing how early influences - among them Bach, Brahms, Franck, Hindemith and Ravel - were subsumed into a musical language distinguished by it's textural clarity and harmonic warmth. Five of the works on this release are receiving their world premiere recording. Jacob Nydegger, a native of Texas, studied with Blanca Rodriguez, winning first prize at the seventeenth annual Petroff Piano Competition and receiving the Outstanding Perfomer award at Texas State Solo and Ensemble Contest in 2012 and 2013. Since then he has studied under Seth Carlin at Washington University in St. Louis, and he currently studies with Joseph Banowetz at the University of North Texas.

The 37 short pieces by Prokofiev transcribed for violin and piano brought together here ought really to come with a health warning. So distinctive are the contours, angles and extensions of the Prokofiev tune, drawn from an apparently inexhaustible hoard, that even a short exposure to the memory circuits of the mind can result in permanent occupation. This album is full of them, creating a panoramic tour around five decades of an exceptionally rich, diverse but ultimately sadly truncated life. Violinist Yuri Kalnits has participated in festivals throughout the world and has played at some of the world’s most important venues. He is a dedicated chamber musician as well as concert soloist.

Metal Angel is a collection of eighteen pieces and a Symphonic Sonata for organ by Gunnar Idenstam, born in Swedish Lappland in 1961; this album presents fifteen of these pieces in a series of three suites. Written between 2013 and 2019, they exploit the full range of the modern symphonic organ to give musical expression to the idea of angels in a Gothic fantasy world. Idenstam’s distinctive musical language blends the physical energy of symphonic rock and metal and the modal cast of Scandinavian folk-music with an approach to the organ in the French cathedral tradition of such composers as Dupré, Vierne and Widor. This recording presents some of the most fiercely exciting organ music of recent years, in high-voltage performances by the composer himself.

Hans Gál (1890–1987) wrote extensively for the viola, including several remarkable works dating from the first decade of his new life in Edinburgh, where he took refuge after the Nazis seized power in his native Austria. His poignant Suite Concertante for viola and orchestra – effectively a concerto for the instrument – is joined here by three substantial chamber works, all infused with Gál’s trademark lyricism. Hanna Pakkala, the violist in all four works here, is the principal viola of the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra and also plays in the Kokkola String Quartet; and Toccata Classics is delighted to welcome the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra and its chief conductor, Sakari Oramo, to its roster of artists.

Roger Smalley (1943–2015) made his mark, first in his native Britain and then in Australia, as composer, pianist, conductor, writer, academic and teacher. Although as performer and commentator he was at the forefront of musical modernism, he was also very fond of nineteenth-century Romanticism, and much of his music bridges the gap between old and new, retaining its roots in the past while reflecting the concerns of his own time, as the works on this album demonstrate.