This recording pairs music for violin and piano by two young British composers who found themselves marooned in American exile by World War II: Richard Arnell (1817-2009) and Stanley Bate (1911-59). Both composers established respectable careers for themselves in the New World before returning to Britain, Arnell in 1947 and Bate in 1949. Arnell’s music can be warmly lyrical and fiercely dramatic by turn, rather like its volatile and energetic composer. Bate’s First Violin Sonata has echoes of two of his teachers- Vaughan Williams and Hindemith. Plymouth-born violinist Patrick Wastnage attended Dartington College of Arts from the age of sixteen. He went on to the Guildhall School of Music, where he studied with Yfrah Neaman, Erich Gruenberg, David Takeno and later with Sandor Vegh. Joining the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1986, he has led a parallel career as soloist and chamber-music player. Elizabeth Dunn studied the piano at the Guildhall School of Music with Geraldine Peppin. Since then she has performed extensively as soloist, accompanist, and in chamber groups.

The Czech-born composer Anton Reicha (1770–1836) was an exact contemporary of Beethoven, and his close friend from their mid-teens. The music of each man demonstrates an awareness of what the other was doing: they showed each other their compositions-in-progress. But although Reicha was closely associated with one of the best-known names in western culture, his own music has been grievously neglected: only his woodwind quintets have achieved any currency. Of his vast cycle of almost forty string quartets just one had been recorded before – an omission this ambitious project intends to put right, thereby revealing one of the most inventive and engaging spirits in classical music. - Toccata Classics

Classical Music

Includes work(s) by Charles Valentin Alkan. Soloist: Kevin Bowyer.

This new release is the first album ever to be dedicated to the music of Ukranian composer Fyodor (Theodore) Akimenko (1876-1945). Akimenko was a student of Rimsky-Korsakov in St. Petersburg, and later went on to be the first teacher of Stravinsky. In 1923, Akimenko chose exile over his career in St. Petersburg, and he finally settled in France in 1929, where he changed his name to Theodore and wrote a great deal of Romantic compositions. The featured soloist on this recording, violinist Tatiana Chulochnikova, began playing piano at the age of 7 and made her professional debut at only 14. She was recently awarded the Jeffrey Thomas Award 2016.

Joseph Woelfl (1773-1812), a friend of the Mozart family from childhood, was one fo the best-known musicians of his day. Woelfl fought a famous "piano duel" with Beethoven in Vienna and a worthy successor to Haydn in the musical life of London, where his music made him a wealthy man and he was an important member of the London Piano School. This album is the first ever to examine in any detail, hopes to rescue Woelfl's once starry reputation from the folds of history. Adalberto Maria Riva is the winner of several national and international prizes. He has given recitals in Croatia, Hungary and many other coutries. This album marks Maria Riva's second release on toccata Classics.

The three works by the Amsterdam-born Henriëtte Bosmans (1895–1952) in this album all date from her early to mid-twenties. The Violin Sonata and Piano Trio are substantial pieces, both animated by the passion of youth – and, given their quality, it is astounding that they should be receiving their first recordings here. At this stage in her life Bosmans was still writing in an expansive, Romantic style, although echoes of French Impressionism, Spain and the Middle East can often be heard – and from time to time the Violin Sonata nods to Bach and Reger.

Like many Austrian Jews, Robert Fürstenthal (1920–2016) fled to the USA after the German invasion of his country in 1938. Music then became his link to his homeland: ‘When I compose, I am back in Vienna’. As an amateur composer, Fürstenthal preferred to work on a small scale, and his output of songs and chamber music is considerable. But he also wrote two sizable works for chamber choir, the first of which, in this series of two albums, is book-ended by piano sonatas – all three works revealing that the tradition of Schubert and Brahms was alive in the California sun.

This third instalment of the recent symphonic output of Fridrich Bruk (born in Ukraine in 1937 but a Finnish resident since 1974) brings two works of astonishing vitality for a composer in his eighties. Both of them have social undercurrents: Symphony No. 22 is driven by ecological concerns about the pollution of the world’s oceans, and No. 23 takes its material from folk-melodies of the Ingrians, a vanishing ethnic group on the Finnish-Russian border. The orchestral writing in both pieces is passionate and wildly inventive, a kaleidoscope of color and counterpoint, sitting somewhere between Villa-Lobos and Pettersson in its profligate abundance.

Sir Donald Tovey (1875–1940), long hailed as one of the finest writers on music in English, saw himself primarily as a composer. His occasionally turbulent friendship with Pau Casals was the spur for a monumental concerto and one of three sonatas: for solo cello, two cellos and cello with piano. The cello was the ideal instrument for Tovey’s Brahmsian musical language, with its long, singing lines unfolding in effortless counterpoint – though the huge passacaglia that ends the solo sonata also demands a virtuoso technique. The brief Bach arrangement recorded here for the first time arose when the twelve-year-old Tovey added a cello line to one of Bach’s best-known preludes, originally for lute.

In this album Mauricio Arias-Esguerra offers a kaleidoscopic view of recent Colombian piano music, highlighting its striking stylistic variety. Germán Darío Pérez sees a traditional dance through a jazzy lens, and Blas Emilio Atehortúa takes a post-serial approach in his Preludio, Variaciones y Presto Alucinante. The influence of progressive rock music can be heard in Gustavo Parra´s Pavec Lingus, as can Jaime León´s love of US American music in his Made in U.S.A. preludes; and there is techno and angst in Ian Frederick´s Suite Catrina. Arias-Esguerra’s own contributions are highly contrasted, with lyricism in his Arizona Mirage and rhythmic drive in his Toccata Bachkovsky. 

----------------------

This portrait of Colombian pianomusic offers a glimpse into a richseam of music-making rarelymined. Arias-esguerra showcasesa variety of styles and influences,from composers living andpassed. His own Arizona Mirageis a highlight.

- BBC Magazine

The Russian viola sonata is a rare bird, not least because the instrument itself was frowned upon by the Soviet authorities; as a result Russian music for the viola has a rather patchy history. It begins in earnest in 1931, when the 1825 Sonata by Mikhail Glinka, ‘the father of Russian music’, was reconstructed from his sketches by Vadim Borisovsky, ‘the father of the Russian viola’. Thereafter, musicians and composers worked together to expand the repertoire. The relationship between the composer Revol Bunin and the violist Rudolf Barshai resulted in a sonata of 1955 which deserves wider currency. Although half a century apart, the Shebalin and Sokolov sonatas have something unusual in common: both were created as part of a triptych, alongside sonatas for violin and cello. All four composers knew how to make the viola sing – though this lyricism is often animated by moments of drama and excitement.

Most of the works by the two Catalan composers heard here - Joan Manén (1883-1971) and Marc Migo (b. 1993) - use material from their folk tradition, making the music fresh, immediate and direct, rather in the manner of Manuel de Falla. But there is also a loose connection with Vienna: Manén's Violin 'Concertino' - an unusually modest label for a full-scale concerto - is something of a cousin to the Korngold Concerto; and Migó's poignant Epitafi a Hans Rott was written in memory of a short-lived Austrian composer who was a close friend of Mahler.

The music of the Edinburgh composer William Beaton Moonie (1883–1961) is as good as unknown. This first-ever album devoted to his piano music reveals a figure downstream from Schumann, Brahms and Grieg, writing in a conservative Romantic idiom colored by echoes of the folk-music of his native Scotland. Many of these pieces, indeed, are concerned to evoke images of the Scottish countryside or suggest aspects of Scottish history. Scottish pianist Christopher Guild is in demand as a recital artist, concerto soloist and collaborative pianist, with concert engagements taking him across the UK. Performances have included those given at St James’s Piccadilly, the Wigmore Hall and St John’s, Smith Square, as well as numerous recitals for music societies under the auspices of the Countess of Munster Musical Trust. Christopher’s concerto appearances have seen him work with conductors such as Sian Edwards, as well as with numerous non-professional orchestras. He has recorded CDs for Champs Hill Records as a duo pianist, and for Toccata Classics, as a soloist and duo partner.

The works of Emanuel Moór (1863–1931) ought to be celebrated as among the major achievements of Romantic music, but because of Moór’s peripatetic life – he was born in Hungary, studied in Vienna (with Bruckner), performed in the US and across Europe, became a UK citizen and settled and died in Switzerland – no country has claimed and promoted him to the degree he deserves. Moór’s musical language offers a deeply satisfying blend of contrapuntal mastery and ardent lyricism, as the works on this album – written for or involving the viola – demonstrate. In time he will be recognized as one of the masters of his age.

REVIEW

As so often Toccata has opened a window on a previously unexplored area of a composer’s oeuvre and in this case it’s Emanuel Moór’s music for viola.

He seems to be known these days rather more as the inventor of the Duplex-Coupler piano than as the man [Donald] Tovey described as being ‘eminently noble in style’. The viola music, which includes music for string quartet, shows that nobility strongly. The Prelude and Fugue for string quartet was written for the Flonzaley Quartet and its clear expressive qualities, which include an intriguing consort evocation as the opening Prelude ends, are strongly audible. The fluid Fugue is exceptionally attractive, avoiding the trap of academism at every turn. The Pièces lyriques, also for string quartet, consists of five compact movements, of which the jovial Viennese waltz is immediately pleasing though the slow movement goes deeper in terms of expressive density. The freshness and rugged songfulness of the finale ends this mini-quartet.

The only one of these works to have been published is the Prelude in E major, Op 123 originally composed for cello – for [Pablo] Casals, in fact – but heard here in Dirk Hegemann’s viola arrangement of 2021. Its dignity would well have suited Casals and it receives a suitably assured and refined reading from Hegemann. The Romanze sounds a touch Fauréan and is certainly a viable song-without-words. Moór’s lyricism is a given, but it is heard to strong advantage when contextualised with other works for viola. The Concertstück are medium-sized at twelve minutes and share common themes that are developed differently. The version for viola and piano encodes some ripe Hungarian elements then slows for more reflective material and includes a cadenza missing from the version for orchestral accompaniment.

Hegemann is the disc’s leading light, but Dávid Báll proves a worthy accompanist, the Rosenstein String Quartet plays with tonal richness and, in the final work, the Anima Musicae Chamber Orchestra is finely directed by Mátyás Antal. As always from this source, the booklet notes are a source of nutritious biographical and musicological information; they deserve a thorough read.

--MusicWeb International (Jonathan Woolf)