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, being rediscovered at last in these Toccata Classics recordings, includes seven symphonies, much chamber music, songs, and choral and piano pieces. The first two of his fifteen violin sonatas offer a seamless outpouring of fin de siècle Viennese lyricism, with one good tune following another, in a style somewhere between Brahms and Korngold. Ulrike-Anima Mathe’s international awards include first prizes at the European Violin Competition in Vienna in 1985 and at the Young Concert Artists Audition in New York in 1988. In 1999 she was appointed violin professor at the Hochschule fur Musik in Detmold. The American pianist Scott Faigen enjoys a distinguished career as concert pianist, composer and conductor. He has served on the faculties of the National Academy of Music, the North Carolina School of the Arts, and the Stuttgart Music Conservatoire. Since 1989 he has been on the faculty of the Mannheim Conservatoire.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

After recent releases devoted to David Hackbridge Johnson and Steve Elcock, Toccata Classics now rescues another British symphonist from oblivion. Rodney Newton (b. 1945) earned his living as an orchestral timpanist and percussionist, becoming known primarily for his works for brass bands. Until now his substantial output for orchestra has remained completely unknown. This first recording of two early symphonies reveals a composer with a strong sense of melody, drama, and color, in the tradition of such earlier British symphonists as Vaughan Williams and Arnold. The tone poem Distant Nebulae, inspired by Charles Ives’ The Unanswered Question, reflects the vastness of the heavens in music of understated beauty and elegance.

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.

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.

I reviewed the first volume in this comprehensive, pioneering series with great pleasure and feel the same way about the second release. As before, the fully idiomatic and nerveless duo of Sherban Lupu and Ian Hobson take the honours — for expressive variety, technical excellence and ensemble assurance.

Each work has some defining feature or features to compel interest, though maximum interest will, I think, be focused on violin fanciers whose range of experience will be richly enhanced by the three works that have never been previously recorded. The first of that trio is Souvenir du Pré aux Clercs, written with Charles Schunke (1801-39), who had been appointed pianist to the French queen. The two men fashioned something out of Ferdinand Hérold’s last work, an opera premiered in 1832. It’s been securely presented by Toccata which allocates a separate track to the introduction, theme, series of variations, cadenza, andante and finale. This is a work where the piano part proves to be every bit as formidable as that for the violin, if not more so. Technical difficulties begin to accumulate as the variations develop, and there is a droll quality to the writing too, and a joint cadenza in which ensemble pitfalls are manifold, and a finale full of élan, lightning fast left hand pizzicato and lashings of audacity.

Pensées Fugitives Part 1, written with Stephen Heller (1839-42), is another premier recording. The Hungarian pianist Heller based himself in Paris, and shunned virtuosic music after an early breakdown. Ernst’s philanthropy — he wanted to help Heller financially — was laudable and the joint work reflects the sense of lyricism and romanticism that Heller sought in composition. The six charmers are character pieces, somewhat reminiscent of Mendelssohn — though Mendelssohn equally knew of Heller and Ernst, so it’s by no means one way traffic. Songful and charming they are performed with impeccable attention to detail.

The last of the previously unrecorded works is Variations brillantes sur un thème de Rossini which was probably Ernst’s first published work. This is a real Paganinian blockbuster with coruscating technical demands; the second variation is an especially arduous test of intonation, which Ernst himself must have passed heroically; and there’s bravura aplenty in the fourth variation as well. After the Last Rose of Summer variations the Fantaisie brillante sur la Marche et la Romance d’Otello de Rossini must be Ernst’s most recorded work. David Oistrakh and Ruggiero Ricci recorded it. Lupu loses little in comparison, keeping things alive timbrally and expressively throughout — his sense of colour shading is exemplary, and Hobson’s pianism outstanding. This feast of articulation, finger position changes, mastery of colour, and subtlety of vibrato usage exemplifies all that is best in Ernst’s writing and indeed in these performances. Note how Lupu’s vibrato widens and intensifies for the ‘pathetic’ sensibility summoned up in the Romance section. As if this were not enough, we have the luxury of the Boléro with its amiable warmth and the two Romances, where cantabile warmth and lilting lyricism are the names of the game.

Top notch recording quality and an outstanding booklet note complete this exemplary offering.

-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

The piano music of the Czech-born composer Antoine Reicha (1770–1836) – friend of Haydn and Beethoven, teacher of Berlioz, Liszt, Franck and many others – is one of the 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 of harmonic and other surprises that show this liveliest of musical minds at work. Reicha’s twenty Études ou Exercices, recorded here for the first time, manage to combine his maverick inventiveness with a considerable degree of charm.

The music of the Swiss pianist-composer Emil Frey (1889-1946) reflects the stages of his career: studies with Fauré, 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.

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.

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.

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.

In the last years of his life, the great composer and violinist 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. This is a world premiere of the complete work.

Will be one of my discs of the year without doubt.

I have to admit to this being the disc I have most eagerly awaited hearing for some months. That being the case I am delighted to be able to report that it has fulfilled all my expectations if not exceeded them – let us all hope that the titling of this as ‘Volume 1’ really does augur well for an extended series of discs by this unique composer.
 
In recent years there has been a steady trickle of Brian’s orchestral works appearing on CD but when you dig a little deeper it becomes clear that these are in effect re-releases of performances where the originals date back some years. So in fact it is nearly ten years since the last ‘new’ recording – Psalm 23 on ClassicO [recorded 2002], then back into the 1990s for the abortive Marco Polo/Naxos ‘Brian Cycle’, the 1980s for EMI’s brief flurry of interest using the RLPO, and the 1970s for the Leicestershire and Hull Schools Symphony Orchestra’s brave traversal of several discs with Unicorn-Kanchana and CBS. This is by no means a complete survey but it gives you a sense of the piece-meal attempts to commit Brian to disc.  

Toccata Classics are proving to be valiant disciples of the Brian cause both on disc and in print. Recently I had the pleasure of reviewing the superb Havergal Brian on Music: Volume Two which Toccata have published. Both that project and this have been instigated under the watchful eye and guiding hand of the Havergal Brian Society and Brian expert Malcolm MacDonald. As part of the book review I commented - has ever a composer been so fortunate in their biographer / promoter as Brian with MacDonald? His knowledge, insight and understanding of this shamelessly idiosyncratic composer is little short of stupendous. That sense of dedication suffuses every element of this recording from the fascinating choice of repertoire on this well programmed CD to the fine engineering supporting excellent playing from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.  

I have to admit that I have not heard any of this music before so I have no frame of reference with which to compare the current performances. Suffice to say there is an air of ‘rightness’ and conviction that is vital to bringing off this often quirky music. Having read the two volumes of Brian’s critical writings has only increased my appreciation of him as a composer. I have a suspicion that even among his more famous composer contemporaries he was the most knowledgeable about the latest developments in the musical scene. His journalistic writing shows him as an enthusiastic supporter of an extraordinarily wide and diverse range of then contemporary music. This, to my mind, adds significantly to his stature as a composer in his own right for instead of producing a mish-mash of musical influences his own work remains strikingly independent. It is well-known that he was largely self-taught as a composer but the choices he makes; structurally, harmonically or melodically are never made through ignorance instead they are guided by a quirky individualism. And therein lies the rub for the listener new to his sound-world; it can often seem that musical material is juxtaposed in a random and almost obtuse manner. Here is where Malcolm MacDonald proves to be such a valuable guide. Whether in this liner or in his definitive 3 volume study of the Brian Symphonies he makes it clear that in what might initially seem ramshackle and even chaotic there is actually a very sophisticated control of form and structure. Brian is dancing to a different tune and it can take the listener some time to ‘hear’ his message. Conductor Garry Walker has become fully attuned to the Brian idiom. As mentioned before these are strikingly confident and convincing performances – orchestras are phenomenally skilled these days but to project such security and conviction as is heard throughout this disc requires those exact same qualities to be projected from the conductor’s podium. It is rare indeed that such complex and demanding music is first heard played as here and it adds considerably to the positive impact of the disc. On the evidence of this disc Walker proves himself to be an interpreter of distinction.

Another remarkable thought is the fact that the works performed here span an astonishing 65 years. The earliest work is the 1903 Burlesque Variations on an Original Theme. Never performed in Brian’s lifetime this is its first professional performance. But why? Some Brian can be tough to digest on first sitting but not this work – it has instant appeal. Written when Brian was 27 it represents his first effort at large-scale orchestral composition. He scored the work for a large romantic orchestra with triple wind, standard brass – but including four trumpets – extended percussion, two harps and organ. Lasting some twenty-five minutes and consisting of a theme and seven variations this is a well balanced and fascinatingly wide-ranging piece. Yes there are moments where the orchestration feels opaque and indeed clumsy but these are repeatedly offset by passages of remarkable power, mystery and beauty. Why Burlesque Variations? – MacDonald offers a fascinating opinion; variation form recurs often in Brian’s works and usually he chose to take a banal/simple tune and then expand the seemingly limited potential of that melody beyond all expectation. Hence the Fantastic Variations of 1907 – based on ‘Three Blind Mice’ or The Symphonic Variations of 1916 – based on ‘Has anybody here seen Kelly?’ are just two examples. It is as if Brian is trying a kind of alchemy transforming the base material of a simple song into musical gold. Yes, the influences are often clearer here than in later Brian and clearly Elgar provided a model but I am pushed to think of any other work by a twenty-seven year old British composer from around the turn of that century of such confident quality. Although I know others will disagree I find Josef Holbrooke’s music to have an empty bombast and reliance on musical effect to which Brian never resorts while York Bowen is interesting and appealing but never challenging in the way Brian is. The closing pages of these variations do try to lift the simple tune onto a grandiose level which is beyond both the melody and the composer (at this stage in his career) but elsewhere there are brilliantly achieved musico-dramatic effects. Try Variation 2 – Tempesto and the simply gorgeously poignant Variation 3 – Elegy that follows. The latter is the emotional heart of the work and opens as a gently regretful valse triste very much in the style of the Nedbal or Sibelius works of that name before building to a powerful strenuous climax way outside the remit of those pieces. The return to the reflective opening is typical Brian in the rapid change of emotional direction before he builds it back to a climax of cinematic splendour. Subtle it is not but hard the heart not to be moved on some level – I love it. Curiously the London publisher Bosworth published the suite which contains Nedbal’s work in 1903 and it became the composer’s biggest hit. But the similarity is one of form nothing more. But it does point up another fact worth considering here; Brian’s music never sounds “English” in the pastoral sense of the word. More ‘stout and steaky’ than ‘cowpat’.

Chronologically, the next work on the disc dates from exactly fifty years later. How typically perverse of Brian in austerity Britain to produce a work that by title alone would seem to belong to the light music world of Edward German or Percy Fletcher. For sure this is lighter music than much of Brian’s output but it has far more substance and muscle than the bulk of the light music repertoire. Not that it is at all in tune with the prevailing trends in 1950s contemporary music either. Again, one has the abiding sense of Brian writing music that suited himself when it suited him. This proves to be another piece of instant appeal with the heart of the work being the second movement Reverie. Throughout the whole work and the orchestral writing – angularly expressive but with awkward parts for solo instruments and some thrilling brass scoring – there is a scale and sweep that is very impressive. Clearly this is not meant to be a work uttering the profoundest thoughts and feelings of the composer but it does show the confidence and expertise with which Brian handled his resources. I would suggest ignoring the titles – I couldn’t help wondering if Brian has used such deliberately twee and diminutive headings in a provocative and ironic manner. Here is another curious parallel – the central pair of movements are scored first for strings alone – the aforementioned Reverie, and then wind and horns - Restless Stream. Vaughan Williams did much the same in his almost exactly contemporaneous Symphony No.8 – although the wind scherzo comes first before the string Cavatina. Not that we can accuse Vaughan Williams of any kind of plagiarism – Brian’s Suite was not to be heard for twenty years (neither can the accusation be reversed – the Vaughan Williams was not premiered until 1956). The closing Village Revels is also the final music on the disc – again ignore the title, this is quite unlike any revel I can imagine but it provides an exciting conclusion to all the works here.

MacDonald explains Brian’s recurring use of the term Elegy to describe movements or individual works. This was the title ultimately given to a 1954 composition originally called A song of sorrow. Brian renamed it some sixteen years later when reassessing his back catalogue with a view to publication. The rationale being that the original title implied a kind of emotional one-dimension that does not encompass the full range of this very impressive work. MacDonald points towards a definition that encompasses both the classical laments of Ovid and the romantic poetic works of Goethe and others. As a critic Brian wrote enthusiastically about Busoni and MacDonald sees a link with such works as that composer’s Nocturne Symphonique or the Sarabande and Cortege. But influence or inspiration is all this link should be seen as. Again Brian has produced a work as striking in its individuality as its expressive power. Jagged and rugged energy courses through this work. There are more of the typical Brian Symphonic fingerprints here, a sense of a restless quest the music searching and unstable. Yet at the same time there is an underlying feel of something grand and ceremonial. MacDonald sees it as a long slow struggle from C minor to the light of C major. Elsewhere on the disc I am a little uneasy about Brian’s penchant for almost hyper-active percussion writing. By my reckoning the percussion should point a moment in the score – dynamic alone need not be a factor – for Brian there seems to be a percussive ‘happening’ in nearly every bar. But here, massed side-drums set against tip-toeing xylophone creates some rather special effects. Again I have nothing but praise for the bravura confidence of the playing of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. There is some truly thrilling brass writing here dispatched with total aplomb. Much as I enjoy the discovery of the Variations on this disc if I had to choose one work to represent Brian it would be this Elegy. As this represents its first recording I would suggest that that alone is enough to merit buying this disc.

My only relative musical disappointment on this disc was with the Legend: Ave atque vale which opens it. In its own right it is remarkable because it is the work of a ninety two year old man. The title which means ‘hail and farewell’ is taken from Catallus’ poetic elegy to his drowned brother written in about 56 BC. MacDonald describes it as being ‘crammed to bursting point with disparate ideas’ which is a sympathetic way of saying perhaps it has not been edited or structured with as much discipline as earlier works. To my ear – given that this is NOT a judgment borne of extended familiarity – it sounds too rambling and disparate in its elements. Here the percussion has an absolute field day throughout without really justifying their continuous presence in musical terms. Possibly this is the kind of work that Brian’s detractors might single out as showing his weaknesses. However, it has the great good sense not to outstay its welcome and by representing just seven minutes of over an hour of vintage Brian no collector need hesitate on this piece’s account. On a positive note it does act as an extraordinary tribute to the undying vitality and individuality of Brian to very end of his long life.

Hopefully, it will be clear by now that I consider this a very special disc – exactly the kind of high quality combination of rare repertoire, performance and technical presentation that collectors hope for. For those as yet unfamiliar with the Havergal Brian I think this could act as an excellent introduction. On the recent Testament release of the famous Boult/BBC performance of Brian’s legendary Gothic Symphony the disc concludes with an interview with the composer where he underlines the fact that he wrote music with little or no expectation of hearing it performed. Instead he was responding a personal creative imperative that could not be denied. How gratified he would be to know that finally his music is beginning to receive the attention is deserves. A Volume 2 from this same team is essential and this current disc will be one of my discs of the year without doubt.

  -- Nick Barnard, MusicWeb International

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.

LAVISTA String Quartets:

No. 1, “Diacronia”;

No. 2, “Reflejos de la noche”;

No. 3, “Música para mi vecino”;

No. 4, “Sinfonias”;

No. 5, “7 Invenciones”;

No. 6, “Suite en 5 partes” 

Cuarteto Latinoamericano • TOCCATA TOCC 0106 (75:27)

The influences on the work of Mario Lavista (b. 1943), Mexico's leading contemporary composer, range from mediaeval, religious and folk music to modernism. His music has a powerful sense of atmosphere and colour — the Second String Quartet, Reflejos de la noche, is played entirely on harmonics — and a vigorous rhythmic drive reminiscent of the quartet-writing of Shostakovich.

Cuarteto Latinoamericano, string quartet

---------------------  
The playing of the Cuarteto Latinoamericano is accomplished, free yet tightly directed from start to finish. Indeed, the quartet was effectively the inspiration, the impetus certainly, for most of these quartets. The players seem to have the music in their blood. It would be hard to think of more persuasive accounts.
 
The booklet that comes with this CD is informative without feeling any need to rush, proselytise or over-advocate. That must be in keeping with what one senses is an aspect of Lavista's confident and generous personality. To be judged sui generis for sure, these six works are not only different enough one from another, but also amazingly creative enough to repay repeated hearings. As an indication of new directions for the medium, they make every sense. As beautiful works in their own right, they are superb.
 
-- Mark Sealey, MusicWeb International

Includes work(s) by various composers. Soloist: Alexander Kniazev.

Mexican composer Manuel Maria Ponce is best known for a handful of popular songs and guitar pieces, and yet he left a huge legacy of some 500 works- orchestral, chamber, and piano music, art songs, and folksong arrangements. These works together form the foundation of the Mexican national repertoire, and yet they are as good as unknown. The works recorded here- some for the first time- reveal a composer with a surefooted command of the orchestra: his early impressionism is infused with echoes of Mexican indigenous culture in textures of unsuspected richness. Jose Miramontes Zapata graduated from the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatoire in Leningrad. He has worked as pianist, choir director, and cultural manager. In 2000 he founded the Orquesta Sinfonica de San Luis Potosi and as artistic director and principal conductor he has promoted many choral and orchestral activities with local young musicians, developing a constant cultural growth in San Luis Potosi with more than 80 concerts per year. The San Luis Potosi Symphony Orchestra occupies an important role in the diffusion of Mexican symphonic music, with concerts in some of the major halls in Mexico, China, and Europe. Further releases of major Mexican symphonic works are in preparation with Toccata Classics.

The English composer Steve Elcock spent years writing music without ever expecting it to be heard: based in rural France, he worked as a translator, composing ‘for the drawer.’ A recent Toccata Classics recording of his Third Symphony and other orchestral pieces revealed him to be a major symphonic voice. The works on this first album of his chamber music show the same long-term control of harmonic tension, occasionally leavened by a mischievous sense of humor. The Clarinet Sextet and The Shed Dances are immediately appealing in their melodiousness and harmonic language, whereas the darkly aggressive String Trio No. 1 foreshadows the Third Symphony with its stark juxtaposition of contrasts, and An Outstretched Hand offers a disturbing comment on our troubled 21st century condition. The Veles Ensemble is a string trio based in London, its repertoire both exploring rarely heard masterpieces and bringing the classics to life. A special interest of the ensemble is in promoting new compositions and contemporary music.

The musical language of the New York-based Arnold Rosner (1945–2013) clothes the modal harmony and rhythm of pre-Baroque polyphony in rich Romantic colours, producing a style that is instantly recognisable and immediately appealing. This second Toccata Classics album of his orchestral music contrasts the high-spirited Unraveling Dances – a rhapsody with more than a nod to Ravel’s Bolero – with the powerful symphonic suite Five Ko-ans for Orchestra and Rosner’s dramatic, dark, hieratic setting of Kafka’s The Parable of the Law for baritone and orchestra. American baritone Christopher Burchett has appeared on the stages of opera companies throughout the United States and Europe, including New York City Opera, Santa Fe Opera, and The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Opera News has described him as a ‘fearlessly vulnerable’ performer, ‘who gave an unflinchingly, heroically human performance that will linger long in the memory.’ Nick Palmer is music director of the Lafayette Symphony in Indiana, North Charleston Pops in South Carolina and the ‘Evening Under the Stars’ music festival in Massachusetts; principal pops conductor of the Altoona Symphony in Philadelphia; and distinguished conductor in residence at Kentucky Wesleyan College.

REVIEW:

This is the second of Toccata’s blessed progression of discs of orchestral music by New York-based Arnold Rosner. You can find reviews of Volume One here and here. Toccata have also issued a chamber music disc. Rosner wrote serious tonal music and the performances on this disc and its recording qualities are a superb compliment to Rosner’s achievement. There is nothing circus-like, trivial or superficial in his output. Even his Millenium Overture packs a far from cheap punch - imposing and sturdy.

The Five Ko-ans for Orchestra comprise No. 1 Music of Changes, No. 2 Ricercare, No. 3 Ostinato, No. 4 Music of Stillness and No. 5 Isorhythmic Motet. They are like a sequence of Samuel Barber’s essays yet distinguished by this composer’s trademark incessant persistence and cool limpidity. These qualities are juxtaposed with passages that are gaunt, statuesque and imposing. The music is not at all ascetic: witness the Respighian horn whoops in the first of the Ko-ans and the brief climactic pages in the Fourth Ko-an. Rosner’s writing throughout these five separately tracked pieces is grand. Indeed, all three works on this disc are further testimony that a Rosner score could have been written by no-one else. That is not to say that certain facets of his language do not touch base with other composers. Vaughan Williams is one reference point but Rosner has his own spare yet dynamic style. Few composers’ music can attain the feeling that he evokes of a lonely listener in some temple looking up giddily at the capitals of the towering columns. That sense of being lost in the moment - an intensity of today’s mindfulness. The Third Ko-an, the shortest of the five, pummels away rapidly and with a motoric power that appears indefatigable. The Fourth is a more peaceful essay - relaxed repose dominated by woodwind solos. The valedictory Fifth ends with a drift into hard-won silence. A Ko-an is defined by Rosner as “a riddle, action, remark or dialogue not comprehensible by rational understanding but conducive to intense or prolonged meditation.”

The other works here include the vigorous 16-minute Unraveling Dances. Through eleven variations the composer draws on familiar musical references: Renaissance, Baroque and Middle Eastern. The writing is richly colored and almost extravagantly joyful use is made of the orchestra. The work rises to a formidable conclusion of dancing grandeur - Rosner’s aural window opened out onto the music of the spheres.

The disc finishes with the 24-minute setting of Kafka’s The Parable of the Law for baritone and orchestra. The words set are reproduced in Toccata’s booklet. The music is hieratic, dramatic and dark-hued. A typically striking introduction commands by quiet and confident insinuation. Soon the slightly mournful baritone, Christopher Burchett, enters, singing of his long and ultimately unsuccessful wait and pleading for entry to “The Law”. The music is sombre, chiming and mesmeric as befits the Kafka text but rises to fury and sneering as the singer presses his bootless case for entry. There is something of RVW’s Pilgrim about the man trying, without success, to persuade The Doorkeeper to permit him access to The Law. The words are less sung and more spoken in hopelessness at 13:00. Later on, Burchett superbly shadows the orchestra in a pitch of roiling excitement although the final pages spell deep peace.

The liner-notes are by none other than Walter Simmons who has done so much for US composers of the generations beyond Gershwin, Copland and Bernstein. He has been a doughty advocate of Rosner’s music as he has also of Schuman, Persichetti, Mennin, Barber, Bloch, Creston, Flagello, Giannini and Hanson. He is also the producer of this disc. I just hope that there are later volumes.

-- MusicWeb International (Rob Barnett)

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.