This album features three concertante works by the Hungarian composer Roland Szentpáli (b. 1977) for symphonic wind band: a virtuoso tuba concerto, with the composer as soloist; a rhapsody featuring clarinet, saxophone and the smoky tones of the tárogató, a folk instrument that sounds like a feral clarinet; and a double concerto in which Szentpáli takes up the saxhorn. The infectious rhythmic drive of all three works has its origins in the same folk traditions that inspired Bartók, and the scoring has the wallop of the big-band sound – and the solo performances are nothing less than astonishing. Roland Szentpáli began playing the euphonium at the age of twelve, moving on to the tuba in the following year under the guidance of Sandor Lukács. He was a student at the Béla Bartok Academy in Budapest from 1991-1995, studying with Joseph Baszinka and Gábor Adamik. Roland continued his studies with Lászlò Szabò at the F. Liszt Academy. Apart from his busy solo and composition schedule, Roland is actually principal tuba with the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra. Always being in great demand he also gave several masterclasses in the United States, Japan and many European countries.

Heinrich Sutermeister (1910–95) belongs to the generation of Swiss composers after Bloch, Honegger, Martin and Schoeck. The runaway success of his operatic version of Romeo and Juliet – in the 1950s it was the most widely produced modern opera after Der Rosenkavalier – soon spread his reputation far afield, and conductors as prominent as Böhm, Karajan and Sawallisch championed his works. Although his star has waned in the quarter-century since his death, the four orchestral works recorded here – ranging from the dramatic suite he drew from that first Shakespearean operatic success via the easy-going charm of two lighter suites to his deeply felt response to the Swiss landscape – bring a salutary reminder of why his music appeals so directly to its audiences. This generously filled recording (it’s over 87 minutes in length) is the first in a project where Rainer Held will be recording unknown Swiss orchestral repertoire for release on Toccata Classics.

REVIEW:

The fact that this is advertised as the first volume of an ongoing series is cause for rejoicing. So too is the fact that the disc is so generously packed – the longest conventional CD that I have ever encountered. I found no difficulty in playing it, although others may find their machines reacting differently. But the recorded sound is magnificent, even when the balance is unconventional; the booklet, with notes and biographies in English and German, is substantial and informative; and the playing and conducting is generally of excellent quality. All the tracks are described as first recordings; Christian Heindl in his booklet note refers to a Vienna “studio recording” of the Romeo und Julia suite conducted by the composer in 1956, but this never appears to have surfaced internationally. Those for whom Sutermeister is just a name (if that) should certainly investigate further.

-- MusicWeb International

The Russian composer Yevgeny Zemtsov (1940–2016) may be better known for the dynasty of musicians – most of them violists – that he fathered than he is for his own music. This first album ever to be devoted to his music features works from the beginning and end of his career: some early violin works, influenced by Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev, a Bartókian string quartet, three spirited and spiky piano miniatures, an oblique piano elegy and five late, enigmatic, almost ritualistic settings of Japanese haikus. Late in life, too, he discovered a fascination with tango, and the album also features his elegant arrangements for string quartet and quintet of two Piazzolla favorites.

Among the few who know his music, Francis George Scott (1880–1958), a son of the Scottish Borders, is admired for having written some of the best art-songs by any British composer. In this first recording of any of his piano music, a handful of lyrical early pieces contrast with the 58 Bartokian miniatures that constitute Scott’s Intuitions – brief but atmospheric distillations of Scottish song, dance and landscape – and a set of virtuoso transcriptions of eight Scott songs by Ronald Stevenson (1928–2015), the major Scottish pianist-composer of the past century.

The composing career of Simon Bainbridge (born in London in 1952) is spanned by the four chamber works in this album, all of them cast as single narrative spans. The First String Quartet, written when its composer was not yet twenty, blends lyricism and pointillism, rather as if it were recasting abstract poetry in sound; and the recent Second offers a kaleidoscopic tableau of color and nervous energy inspired by visual art. In his Cheltenham Fragments, as the title suggests, Bainbridge uses mosaic technique to build up textures and thematic outlines. And the long lines of the virtuosic Clarinet Quintet generate fleetfooted whirlwinds as they unfold. Linda Merrick and the Kreutzer Quartet worked closely with the composer on the preparation of these recordings.

The music of the Bulgarian composer-conductor Emil Tabakov (b. 1947) explores the darker side of the human spirit in epic scores as austere as they are powerful. His mighty Seventh Symphony, almost an hour in length, is conceived on a massive scale. The monumental opening Allegro moderato passes through islands of calm during its desperate ride through hell, and is followed by a heaven-rattling funeral march and a wild, swirling dance. The finale opens by stoking up the tension in an extensive slow introduction before the music is once again whipped into a maelstrom of dark, driven energy, piling forward to its inexorable conclusion.

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)

The English composer Christopher Wright, born in Suffolk in 1954, declares that he is 'not fettered by fashion, style, ideology or gimmickry or some insatiable desire to be original'; instead, he writes music that aims to communicate directly with the listener - although it can also be thorny and challenging. This first-ever album of his sacred choral music reveals it to be in the British-cathedral tradition of composers like Benjamin Britten, William Mathias, Bernard Rose and Malcolm Williamson: the melodic lines may on occasion be angular and the harmonies sometimes tart, but Wright's concern with immediacy of expression ensures that the 'personal prayers' embodied in these pieces can be readily understood and appreciated.

The organ works of Axel Ruoff, born in Stuttgart in 1957, constitute one of the most important contributions to the literature for the instrument by any composer since Messiaen. Stylistically, his music unites the French cathedral tradition of composers like Langlais, Dupré and Guillou with the concern with counterpoint and logic heard in Reger and later German figures. Like Messiaen, Ruoff often finds stimulus in religious sources; unlike him, it is biblical narrative that inspires many of Ruoff’s works, and he uses the unparalleled resources of the modern symphonic organ in his response to some of the most dramatic scenes in the Old Testament, writing music of freewheeling energy and uncompromising power.

In his early days the composer-pianist Igor Raykhelson – born in Leningrad in 1961, once a New York resident and now based in Moscow – studied both classical and jazz piano. Those influences have combined to create a uniquely personal, Rachmaninov-plays-the-blues Neo-Romantic style: not only is Raykhelson unafraid to write a good tune – it’s clear right away whose tune it is. And in his chamber and instrumental works, the intimate, ‘parlando’ manner that Raykhelson absorbed from jazz becomes particularly effective. This release features some of the leading Russian musicians of the current day: Ekaterina Astashova (the composer's wife) is joined by the cellist Alexander Kniazev, the pianist Konstantin Lifschitz and the Borodin Quartet.

The personal generosity that made the Scottish composer Ronald Stevenson (1928–2015) such a warm and vibrant character extended also to his writing-desk: around a quarter of his enormous output is given over to transcriptions, mostly for piano, of music by other composers. Here he pays homage to three earlier colleagues whose music he particularly esteemed: Purcell, Delius and van Dieren. Stevenson described his version of Van Dieren’s String Quartet No. 5 (1931) as ‘transcribed as a piano sonata (which B. v. D. never composed)’ – and thus it became the piano sonata which Stevenson himself never composed. The album ends with Stevenson’s brief but achingly beautiful harmonisation of Purcell’s The Queen’s Dolour – as exquisite an example of the transcriber’s art as anyone could wish.

The name of Vasily Pavlovich Kalafati (1869–1942), born to Greek parents in the Crimea, has a toe-hold in the history books as one of Stravinsky’s teachers, but he was an accomplished composer in his own right. The early piano works recorded here show the influence of Rimsky Korsakov (his teacher and friend) and other Russian-nationalist composers, but they also owe something to the examples of Chopin and Brahms, not least in their blend of passion and textural clarity. The vigor of these pieces stands in stark contrast to the ultimate fate of their composer: he starved to death during the Siege of Leningrad.

Yevhen Stankovych is one of teh Ukraine's leading contemporary composers. His music for violin and piano is recorded here almost all of it for the first time. The works on this album cover a wide range of emotions, from wild highland dances that distantly recall Szymanowski to the plangent, lyrical lament of Maydan Fresco, protesting the deaths of demonstrators in Maydan Square in 2013. The musicians here - wife and husband team Ukrainian Solomia Soroka and American Arthur Greene - have consulted the composer on the preparation of this program, giving their interpretations a rare authenticity. Solomia Soroka was born in Lviv, Ukraine. She earned her master's degree and completed her postgraduate studies in the Kiev Conservatoire, and later served on its staff in the department of chamber music. Since her American debut in 1997, she has performed throughout the United States as well.

REVIEW:

Both Solomia Soroka and Arthur Greene play with sensitivity and passion and have been well recorded. The violinist’s own booklet notes are customarily excellent. This is a valuable addition to the roster of approachable and valuable new violin music available on the Toccata label.

-- MusicWeb International

Painters sometimes talk about the intensity of the light they encounter in Australia. Peter Dart, born in Sydney in 1953, brings something of that brightness to his compositions, which are further animated by buoyant rhythms and a lively sense of humor, even mischief. They are, at the same time, anchored in a secure command of counterpoint, and given a timeless quality by his fondness for modal harmony. Most important of all, the technical mastery that gives these works their surefooted appeal is suffused with straightforward human warmth.

Ivan Sokolov, born in Moscow in 1960, has made his mark both as composer and as pianist. After graduating from Moscow Conservatory in the early 1980s, he taught composition and orchestral score reading there, while also promoting new music in concerts in and around Moscow. Later, in the 1990s, he traveled to various countries in Europe, presenting his and other composers' piano compositions to various types of audiences, at concerts and workshops. His early compositions were avant-gardist, but he eventually rejected radicality in favor of a more traditional musical language, one with its roots in Tchaikovsky, Glazunov and Rachmaninov, flavored, perhaps, with a hint of Shostakovich. Most of the works here were composed within the last few years and are couched in the unforced lyricism of his latter-day Romanticism.