This second release in a series of orchestral music recordings of the Hungarian composer Ferenc Farkas (1905–2000) again highlights his music’s appealing characteristics: catchy tunes, transparent scoring, buoyant rhythms and a fondness for Baroque forms and folk-dances. Like his teacher Respighi, Farkas adapted Baroque originals for modern performance, with equally attractive and enjoyable results. Lászlö Töth joins the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra of Budapest in Farkas’ Trumpet Concertino.

The Toccata Classics survey of the music of the Hungarian composer Ferenc Farkas (1905-2000) continues with this fifth album of his orchestral music. Earlier releases have presented the lighter side of his music, with its quasi-Baroque textures and buoyant good humor, but this one shows Farkas working on a larger scale and in generally darker mood. Here he uses the full resources of the symphony orchestra in a number of powerful and dramatic works, including two movements from a symphony that he later withdrew and an orchestration of Liszt’s Funerailles. A lighter bonne bouche-the Dances from the Matra, rather like Kodaly’s Dances from Galanta- rounds things off. Gabor Farkas (no relation to the composer) graduated from the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest in 2005, finishing his doctoral studies there in 2014 at his alma mater under the mentorship of Zoltan Kocsis. In March 2012 he won the Franz Liszt Award ( the highest Hungarian state award for artists).

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.

This album explores the music of the Hungarian composer Ferenc Farkas. One of the works featured here is a long-lost Sonata for solo Cello, composed in 1932 but discovered and first performed in 2014. Miklos Perenyi is one of the most brilliant and distinguished cellists. Born into a musical family, he always excelled. Perenyi has appeared in the world's major musical centres, performing regularly around Europe, in China and the U.S.

This is the tenth release in the Toccata Classics exploration of the music of the Hungarian composer Ferenc Farkas, here with his chamber music with flute in the spotlight. As with previous albums in this series, the music here highlights the characteristics that make Farkas’ music so appealing: catchy tunes, transparent textures, buoyant rhythms, a fondness for Baroque forms and a taste for Hungarian folk music that marks him out as a true successor to Bartok and Kodaly. Some of these pieces speak a tougher language that shows Farkas to have been in touch with his times, but it is the infectious melodic appeal of most of the music here that carries the day. This album features 12 works, with 35 individual movements and 11 different combinations of performer. The central performer here is one of Europe’s finest flautists, the Hungarian-Danish Andras Adorjan.

ERNST Introduction and Fantasy on Le Quattour Favori by F. Halévy , Op. 6. Élégie , Op. 10. Introduction, Variations, and Finale on a Waltz by Charles Shunke and Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst, Op. 26. Hungarian Airs, Op. 22. HELLER and ERNST Pensées fugitives , 7-12. OSBORNE and ERNST Souvenirs of La Juive • Sherban Lupu (vn); Ian Hobson (pn) • TOCCATA 0163 (80:55)


Toccata’s series, Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst: Complete Music , continues with its third volume, comprising two sets of variations, the once famous but now at least familiar Élégie , the second half of Pensées fugitives (the first half having appeared in the series’s first volume), an opera fantasy, and the formidable Airs hongrois variés (here with a cadenza by Arthur Hartmann), all played, once again, by violinist Sherban Lupu and pianist Ian Hobson. The first work in the collection bears the title Introduction et Variations Brillantes en form de Fantaisie pour le violon sur le Quatuor favori de Ludovic de F. Halévy and consists of a set of four variations on a theme from Halévy’s opera Ludovic (according to the notes, Halévy completed the work begun by Ferdinand Hérold). As in the earlier volumes, Lupu produces a slightly acidulous tone, but he wields it suggestively, leaping with great effect into the higher registers in the introduction and playing with the pathos and drama the music, as well as the composer’s reputation, demands. As in the other volumes, Toccata has provided separate tracks for each section—the introduction, theme, variations, and concluding passages—so that reader-listeners can follow the highly detailed—and highly informative—booklet notes by Ernst’s biographer, Mark Rowe. In the variations, Lupu communicates the brilliance and aplomb (listen to his strutting staccato double-stops sprinkled with pizzicatos or the transcendentally difficult finale) that must have made such a strong impression on Ernst’s listeners (he seemed to have known—and been admired by—virtually everybody, including Liszt, with whom he played Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata, Joachim, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Robert and Clara Schumann, Paganini, Brahms, Wieniawski, and Charles Hallé, while the perceptive 19th-century violin historian, the Rev. H. R. Haweis, identified him as the greatest of all the violinists he’d heard).


The notes relate the hyper-romantic story of the Élégie sur la mort d’un objet chéri , which Ernst composed upon learning of the death of a young woman with whom he had fallen in love years earlier. Lupu creates the violinistic equivalent of a sob—many times over—in his heartfelt performance of this piece, which includes Louis Spohr’s characteristically chromatic introduction—the practice of including, which Rowe traces to Joachim and August Wilhelmj. Compare this deeply moving reading to the blander but still affecting one by Ingolf Turban (without Spohr’s introduction, on Claves CD 50-9613, Fanfare 20:6), the rich-toned but again less electifying one by Ilya Grubert (with Spohr’s introduction but also with some heavy breathing that doesn’t really help make Ernst’s mournful point—Hyperion 67619, Fanfare 31: 6), and Grubert’s similar reading with orchestra (without Spohr’s introduction but with the weight of the orchestra to give it ballast, which Steven E. Ritter reviewed in Fanfare 30:5 and I reviewed in Fanfare 31:1—Naxos 8.557565), and it becomes clear how much more pathos Lupu wrings from the piece. The notes give the next work the title, Introduction, Variations et Final, Dialogués, & Concertans sur une Valse favorite pour Piano et Violin par Charles Schunke et H. W. Ernst , and the work, with its showy pianism, recalls the Thème Allemande Varié , also by the two in collaboration, which appears in the series’ first volume. In this case, they’ve embellished in four variations a waltz by Johann Strauss, Sr., creating from it a highly entertaining, rhythmically vibrant pastiche that relies for its effect more heavily on pianistic than on violinistic brilliance. Hobson meets the challenge, as does Lupu—handily in both cases (and the violin part’s not at all easy, even if it’s overshadowed by the piano).


The Pensées fugitives include a Rêverie, Un Caprice, Inquiétude, Prière pendant l’orage, Intermezzo , and a Thème original de H. W. Ernst , with a variation and finale. (The identification of Ernst must have been necessary because Ernst published these pieces with pianist Stephen Heller—and though Ernst wasn’t their sole composer, he did give performances of them.) In the Rêverie, Lupu plays some portamentos that will strike many listeners as old-fashioned, but will seem to others the most effective way in which to heighten the expressivity—which they do. The Caprice doesn’t suggest the difficulty of Paganini’s works by the same name, but communicates the joviality and indeterminacy at the title’s root (a leaping goat?). The restless Inquiétude gives way to the moving Prière, to which, according to the notes, a storm serves as the background. Lupu and Hobson capture the prayer’s urgency as effectively as they do the storm’s tumultuousness. The Intermezzo, more playful, nevertheless reflects darker Affekten in its accompaniment, at least in Hobson’s performance. The theme and variations doesn’t empty Ernst’s bag of tricks as do the other works, but the variations seem strongly characterized, in the drawing-room manner, and the duo digs the marrow out of each of these moods and posturings. The booklet notes give the epigraphs printed with these pieces and descriptions of each.


Lupu and Hobson make Souvenirs de l’Opéra La Juive de F. Halevy [sic] pour Piano et Violon Concertants Composés par Osborne et Ernst , another collaboration—this time with George Osborne, according to the notes, an Irish pianist—sound quintessentially operatic, in each of its two sections. The intensity of these movements, and their performances, gives way to the breathtaking swagger of the Hungarian Airs , which Rowe identifies as one of Wieniawski’s favorite warhorses and even cites as an influence (in its rising 10th) on Edward Elgar’s Violin Concerto. Ruggiero Ricci recorded this piece twice, mounting its technical challenges with more breathtaking panache (if greater recklessness) than does Lupu, although Ricci doesn’t capture to a significantly greater degree its ethnic coloring or the affecting lyricism of its second theme, in which, once again, Lupu seems almost to sob. And Hartmann’s brilliant and commanding cadenza fits the work hand-in-glove.


For those who haven’t yet discovered the riches of Toccata’s series, this third volume might be as good a place as any to begin—but surely not to end. There’s a diamond in every sock drawer—almost, in fact, in every sock. The volumes of this series ought to pass directly through the Want List into the Hall of Fame, but it may be good for readers to learn of them more expeditiously among the pages of ordinary reviews. But the usual precautions ought to apply: Not recommended for those with heart problems, and so forth. They’re that exciting.


FANFARE: Robert Maxham

A formidable start to Toccata’s Ernst series.

Unlike Paganini, the Moravian violinist Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst – their careers overlapped, indeed Ernst was something of a musical son – has not garnered a large discography. It’s not surprising. Violinists seem to operate on the principle that if you’re going to essay the works of one wrist-crunching, finger-stretching nineteenth century composer-executant of genius, let it be Paganini. This leaves Ernst in the recorded wilderness, and other than the Last Rose of Summer variations and one or two other pieces – especially those that appeal to the intrepid solo violinist – the bulk of his other works, especially those for violin and piano, have lain relatively discarded.
 
He wasn’t always neglected; and there have been pockets of interest over the years. Indeed, if you go back far enough you’ll find two very early recordings of two pieces in this recital; Jan Rudenyi recorded an abridgement of the Carnaval de Venise variations back in 1905, and Hugo Heermann, an important German violinist, recorded the Second of the Op.8 Nocturnes at around the same time, albeit in an arrangement for violin and orchestra.
 
But of far more significance is that Sherban Lupu himself has already recorded some Ernst with Peter Pettinger for Continuum [CCD1017] – back in 1990 they set down the Adagio sentimentale op.13, Airs hongrois variés Op.22, the Op.17 Polonaise, and the Rondo Papageno, the last of which he reprises here for Toccata Classics. The others will follow in subsequent volumes, of which there are to be six in total, along with new editions of the works in question, edited by Lupu and published by Toccata.
 
Lupu proves a lordly exponent. Ernst was quick off the mark with his Fantasie brillante sur le Prophète – Meyerbeer’s opera had been written the previous year – and Lupu demonstrates a splendid command of both its more static legato moments and its increasingly virtuosic demands. One really needs wrists of velvet steel to encompass the demands placed on them, not least in the broken chord passage – but Lupu keeps the line intact despite all this, even though there is some rough bowing around the three minute mark of the Andantino pastorale section. That is part of Lupu’s fearless approach to these works, and he’s not afraid of a resinous or crunching attack when the occasion calls for it. He’s notably nuanced in the Nocturnes, spinning a noble operatic legato in the E major, the more famous one, and dispatches the cadential passage with sang froid. I admire him and Toccata all the more for not splicing an accidental string touch.
 
The Carnaval de Venise variations is one of his best known pieces, at least to the string fraternity. With left hand pizzicatos, octave leaps, fearsome harmonics and the like, this calls for some superhuman bowing and left hand feats, feats indeed of digital gymnastics. What with this, it’s necessary also to convey something of the sheer wit, gall and theatrical outrageousness of the writing, something Lupu does in spades. Each variation is separately tracked here – in fact Toccata is scrupulous about separate banding, so that these nine pieces generate a total of 43 separate tracks.
 
The Op.13 Morceaux make for a contrasting pair; the first is a scena and there’s the gentle lyricism of the second. For all the fire and brimstone, one must not forget Ernst the charmer. The Thème Allemand Varié is a first recording, and so is the Rondo Allemand – it was co-written with pianist Charles Schunke (1801-1839) - whilst the Carnaval de Venise is heard fully, intact, for the first time here. That’s a particularly notable feature of a series like this, something one could also note of, say, Hungaroton’s Hubay series. We end with a piece Lupu played on that Continuum disc, the Rondo Papageno, another devilish finger-buster, and something of an experimental number, which plays with The Magic Flute figure and displays the violinist’s technique with dramatic flourish.
 
The excellent notes are by Mark Rowe, who has written a biography of the composer, and production values are high. The recorded balance rather favours Lupu over Hobson. Other than that, this is a formidable start to the Ernst series.
 
-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

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

Einar Englund (1916-1999) was not only one of Finland's major symphonists; he was also one of his country's most important pianists. He was destined for a virtuoso career until he damaged a finger as a soldier in the Battle of Bengtskjar in the ''Finnish Continuation War'' in 1941 - but when he later discovered the bullet holes in his beret, he realized he had a lucky escape! Englund wrote surprisingly little for his own instrument, but the works he did produce glitter with a Prokofievan steely strength and textural clarity. They are also animated with the ironic humor that was typical of the composer himself. The pianist here is one of Finland's finest musicians, Laura Mikkola. The booklet essay is by Christian Holmqvist, Englund's biographer, and is followed by a personal reminiscence of Einar Englund by Martin Anderson, founder of Toccata Classics. Laura Mikkola studied at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinkin, the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and the School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana. She has been the recipient of many awards, among them second prize in the Queen Elizabeth International Piano Competition in Brussels in 2016.

The Russian composer Joel Engel (1868-1927) is unofficially considered ''the father of Jewish music''. He paved the way for a nationalist movement that used Yiddish and Hebrew folksongs as the basis of a serious art-form. Well before Kodaly and Bartok in Hungary, Engel went out to the shtetls of eastern Europe, writing down the villagers' songs and then composing music inspired by his excursions. This first-ever album of his music reveals the melodic immediacy of these songs and instrumental pieces, capturing the soul of a people and a centuries-old vanished culture. The musicians of teh Pittsburgh Jewish Music Festival are the highest-calibre local professionals; players for the orchestral and chamber-music concerts include members of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Opera and Ballet Orchestras, and faculty members of the music departments from Carnegie mellon and Duquesne Universities. The recordings on this album represent a six-year project devoted to the St. Petersburg Society for Jewish Folk Music and its affiliated Russian composers.

The recording is one of the most important of the 300+ that Toccata Classics has released, in terms both of its extraordinary ‘back-story’ and the quality of the music itself. The English composer Steve Elcock (b. 1957) has been writing music since his teens but, with virtually no contacts in the musical world, told no one what he was doing- and thus has evolved a compelling symphonic style entirely his own. It combines virtuoso orchestral writing with a sense of momentum that has its roots in the Nordic-British tradition of Sibelius, Nielsen, Simpson, Brian and similar figures. His Third Symphony is a vast canvas generating fierce energy and titanic violence, leavened at times by a sardonic sense of humor. Choses renversees par le temps ou la destruction is a dark symphonic triptych where fragile beauty is constantly at threat from the forces of ignorance. The breezy, buoyant Festive Overture has a Waltonian swagger that barrels on with relentless jollity.

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.

At the beginning of his career, the Viennese pianist-composer Anton Eberl (1765–1807) had to put up with the doubtful flattery of seeing some of his works published under the name of Mozart, who was a friend and supporter. But Eberl’s charming and elegant music deserves to be remembered in its own right: it engages in remarkably imaginative and experimental formal innovations, developing the Viennese Classical style beyond the point at which Mozart had left it, to a degree of refinement that led Eberl’s contemporaries to prefer his compositions to Beethoven’s. Heejung Kang received her doctorate in Piano Performance at the College of Music at the University of North Texas in 2004. For Toccata Classics she has recorded the first in a planned series of the piano music of Reinhard Oppel. Currently she teaches as an adjunct professor in piano at the University of North Texas. Active both as a soloist and a chamber musician, violinist Dayeon Hong has performed in venues across the globe, and has served as leader of a number of Korean orchestras.

The cello works of the London-born Stephen Dodgson present the musical personality of this much-loved composer in a nutshell. Dodgson's style is direct but rich in allusion with a lively, sometimes brittle, sense of humor, adding a Shostakovich-like irony. The remarkable clarity of the instrumental textures underline a strong sense of narrative, with the cello almost as a human voice, unfolding it's story with understated passion. Evva Mizerska is a cello lecturer at Morley College and Emma Abbate, a professor at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, formed in 2003, the Evva*Emma Duo has performed in many European countries.

This third album in the Toccata Classics survey of the chamber music of London-born Stephen Dodgson (1924–2013) focuses on his works for oboe. It shows a master-craftsman at work: Dodgson fuses a Baroque sense of clarity, a modern English elegance that has echoes of Britten and Tippett and a hint of eastern European mystery. His writing for oboe has a strong sense of narrative, touching a range of moods, from deep emotion to tongue-in-cheek fun.James Turnbull is the featured oboist on this recording.