The reputation of the Anglo-Scottish composer William Wordsworth (1908–88), great-great-grandnephew of the poet, has recently been restored by a series of Toccata Classics albums of his orchestral music. His piano music, too, was poorly known before now, none of it recorded since a handful of pieces appeared on LP 60 years ago – though his epic Piano Sonata is a work of major importance. This first ever complete recording reveals an honest, unfussy approach to the keyboard akin to that of two other major symphonists, Sibelius and Rubbra: like them, Wordsworth’s primary concern seems to have been the expression of deep feeling – which makes the gentle story-telling of his miniatures for children all the more surprising.

In 2019 the Swedish organist and composer Gunnar Idenstam was commissioned to provide the music to a film, The Vegan Toothbrush, by the Norwegian film-maker Trygve Luktvasslimo, which takes seriously the issue of climate change itself but satirises the quasi-religious intensity of climate activists. Idenstam is one of the few remaining organists who maintain the centuries-old tradition of improvisation at the console, and his extemporisations for the film, all of which are concerned with water, developed into a kind of powerfully atmospheric sea symphony.

Virko Baley was born in Ukraine in 1938 and came to the USA as a refugee in 1949, eventually making his home in Las Vegas. He has long been fascinated by the poetry of Emily Dickinson, as can be heard in the two moving works recorded here – one an orchestral song-cycle setting her texts, the other a suite for violin and piano inspired by those settings. They display an acute ear for orchestral colour, a fondness for dramatic gesture and a strong sense of lyricism, occasionally inflected by distant echoes of Baley’s eastern European origins, the richness of the song-cycle placing him downstream from Mahler and Berg and the restraint of the Songs without Words occasionally evoking Arvo Pärt.

With this first Toccata Next album of Mexican music for harp, the American harpist Janet Paulus pays tribute to her adoptive country and to three composer friends, each with a concertante work and music for solo harp – several of them recently written for her. The predominant style is gently Neo-Romantic, occasionally animated with echoes of Mexican folk-music.

With this second volume of ¡Colombia Viva! – a series capable of infinite expansion, as is indeed intended – Mauricio Arias-Esguerra embarks on another lightning tour of the recent piano music of his native country, displaying the wide variety of styles on offer there, from atmospheric modernism to catchy folk dances, a recurrent element being striking rhythmic vivacity.

Derek Scott, born in Birmingham in 1950, has an international reputation as an historian of the British music hall and other forms of light entertainment. But he is an outstanding composer in his own right – a master craftsman and natural tunesmith, who manages to unite good humour, unerring technique and deep feeling in music of immediate appeal. Although the works recorded here represent his most recent harvest of orchestral music, for many of them he revisited material composed earlier in his career, using it as the basis for a series of new scores, some exhibiting a very English sense of whimsy, others concerned with deeper matters – one, indeed, inspired by the war in Ukraine.

The output of Richard Flury (1896-1967), one of Switzerland's most prolific composers, ranges from operas and ballets to symphonies, instrumental concertos, sacred and secular vocal works, chamber music and no fewer than 181 songs with piano accompaniment. These four song-cycles, written between 1920 and 1946, contain 45 of them, their concision nevertheless embracing an expansive, Romantic style of which Schumann himself might have approved. The prevailing mood is one of an open-hearted sincerity, occasionally enlivened by a dash of humour.

The piano music of Heino Eller (1887–1970), a total of 206 works, is not only the largest part of his output: it is also the largest body of works in Estonian classical music. But most of these pieces are unknown, even though the best of them are original contributions to the twentieth-century piano repertoire, with Eller’s sensitive lyricism underpinned by gentle humour and an occasional epic tone. This ninth and final volume in its first-ever complete recording prefaces his expansive Piano Sonata No. 3 with a series of charming miniatures and ends with the emblematic anthem Homeland Tune, a musical embodiment of Estonian national feeling.

The music of the Yorkshire-born Arnold Cooke (1906–2005) – solidly constructed, inventively contrapuntal, lyrical and energetic in turns – does not deserve the neglect it suffered even in its composer’s lifetime. This first album, of two presenting all five of Cooke’s string quartets, underlines his reputation for resourceful craftsmanship, presented in a style which sits downstream from Paul Hindemith, with whom he studied in Berlin, and from Béla Bartók.

REVIEW:

Like our Ned Rorem, the English composer Arnold Cooke (1906–2005) nearly lived to see his own centennial. He was a student of Hindemith, and his work has his master’s best traits — has athletic motion, tart harmonies and counterpoints, and excellent construction.

His Quartet 1 (1933) has a fugal opening that becomes thorny, but in a bracing way. Its individual lines have an Ivesian independence. The scherzo has rapid leaping figures; the interlude has longer lines combined in counterpoint. The slow movement has an elegant legato theme, later re-introduced with insistent rhythms that themselves become important. The whirligig finale has a more deliberate relief section before the faster music returns, building to a dramatic climax before it tapers off to a C major conclusion.

In Quartet 3 (1967), the beginning contrasts martial dotted figures with more legato melodies. II makes skilled interplay between arching themes and pizzicato accompaniments. Its counterpoint is tonally wayward, but the overall form is clear owing to Cooke’s control over its pacing. The scherzo has a jiglike theme expanding to hemiolic 2-versus-3 rhythms. In the finale the themes use traditional rhythmic patterns, but with non-tonal lines. A theme in the development even has a Scotch snap. The movement ends on a unison G natural.

Quartet 5 (1978) has 3 continuous movements. It begins with winding lines, then unified gestures. The closely voiced harmonies are done with a master’s touch.

Cooke’s dissonances result from his logical voice-leading, rather than being tacked on to sound “modern”. Thus, listeners willing to do a little mental heavy lifting will find his work fascinating and readily understandable.

— American Record Guide

The music of Estonian organist-composer Süda (1883–1920) combines contrapuntal mastery with virtuosic command of the Romantic organ. Süda’s brief life and his perfectionism meant that his output – exclusively for the organ – remained small, but it is beautifully crafted and highly expressive.

Estonian violinist Kerem (b. 1981) is both a performer and composer, with over 100 works to his credit, 3 symphonies among them. (Toccata)

Russian composer Korndorf was a larger-than-life character and wrote music that was expansive and urgent. His 3 works for solo cello illustrate his unwillingness to be governed by convention. (Toccata)

This second volume of the orchestral music of the Austro-American composer Richard Stöhr (1874–1967) reveals further marvels: the first of his two suites for string orchestra encases a moving slow movement between a charming prelude and an elegant fugue; and the four imposing spans of the expansive First Symphony offer grandeur and heartfelt profundity – as well as irresistibly catchy tunes that will set the foot tapping. Stöhr writes in a musical language somewhere between Bruckner, Mahler and his exact Viennese contemporary Franz Schmidt – but it is a voice increasingly readily recognised as his own.

The American composer John Stamp (b. 1954) – universally known as ‘Jack’ – is a familiar figure in the worlds of the symphonic wind-band movement that flourishes in US universities and of the brass band on both sides of the Atlantic. This first Toccata Classics album of his music presents a cross-section of his recent works for woodwinds, brass and strings, varied in mood, from upbeat to reflective, and in style, from a solemn hymn-setting to buoyant, outdoors Americana à la Copland, now and then coloured by a hint of Jazz.

Nikolay Myaskovsky (1881–1950) was given the sobriquet of ‘the conscience of Russian music’ thanks to his dignified bearing and quiet wisdom – qualities reflected in the unemphatic strength of his music. His orchestral, chamber and instrumental works are regaining the currency they once enjoyed, but his large corpus of songs, many of them understated masterpieces, has yet to attract systematic attention – a situation this series hopes to remedy. This second album presents his entire output of songs for baritone and piano, most of them early works responding to Russian lyric poetry with the calm dignity typical of his compositions – though there is the occasional flash of passion.