These two works present two sharply contrasting sides of Malcolm Arnold: his limitless resources of knockabout fun, and a sense of existential tragedy. But each score presents its own surprises: the jocularity of the Grand Concerto Gastronomique conceals some seriously good (though not seriously serious) music; and the delicately scored Ninth Symphony, written after five years when its composer had, in his own words, ‘been through hell’, irradiates its emotional restraint and elegiac tone with moments of light and warmth.

REVIEW:

Overall, this is a typically excellent disc from Toccata; first rate music receiving effective performances presented in an informative and valuable package. Even the rather sombre, indeed haunted, image of Arnold that stares bleakly from the booklet cover is well-chosen and apt. Given that it is two decades since we have had a new survey of Arnold’s magnificent symphonies, I hope that this will prove to be just the beginning of a new cycle – a warmly welcomed disc.

-- MusicWeb International

The Muscovite Alexander Tchaikovsky (b. 1946) – nephew of Boris Tchaikovsky but no relative to Pyotr Ilich – is one of the most highly respected composers at work in Russia today, and yet his music has had little exposure to western audiences. His symphonic style owes something to that of his uncle: it likewise patiently develops enormous power over large expanses of sound, although there is also room for gently ironic touches of nostalgia – an inheritance, perhaps, from his uncle’s teacher, Shostakovich. The monumental Third Symphony (1995–2002), scored for a huge orchestra, is infused with dance rhythms: it uses material from an abandoned ballet based on Dostoyevsky’s The Devils. The Seventh Symphony is very much a work de nos jours: Tchaikovsky composed it during the Covid-19 pandemic, scored it for a socially distanced orchestra of strings, percussion and piano – at which point, as he writes, ‘the virus then took revenge’, and he fell ill himself. The message of the work is clear, as the turmoil of the first movement gives way to a message of hope in the second.

Alexandre Tansman’s fundamental style is Stravinskyan Neo-Classicism animated by the dance-rhythms of his native Poland and energized by a masterly command of counterpoint. The substantial body of music he produced for his own instrument, the piano, has never been systematically examined in recordings. This first installment presents works he wrote soon after his 1919 arrival in Paris, the city that was to remain his home – except for the years of WW II, spent in American exile. Tansman’s music is a special area of academic study and musical exploration for the American pianist Danny Zelibor.

REVIEW:

It is always surprising to be treated to first recordings written as far back as the 1920s and there are three on this disc. It was fascinating to hear them and to read the helpful notes. These highlight what to listen out for among which was an indication that there are echoes of Scriabin among others in Tansman’s experimental 7 Préludes and so there are. In fact that feeling often occurs when Tansman is at his most dreamy creating a state in which fantasy plays a strong role.

The works on this disc seem all the more impressive when one is reminded that they were written when the composer was in his twenties and had another fifty plus years of composition ahead of him. He never wasted any of those years, producing a huge volume of works. He was definitely one of those composers who ‘hit the ground running’ for these early works do not betray any struggle to find his style. His ensuing compositional life was more one of development and refinement.

I’ve always been impressed by Tansman’s works and this disc proves no exception. Danny Zelibor is obviously an enthusiast and can write authoritatively about the music he plays. He gives us compelling performances that will surely win over new fans for this thoroughly decent and principled human being and superlative composer. Toccata continues to shed new light on undeservedly obscure composers and deserve support and thanks from all music-lovers.

-- MusicWeb International

A Saami Requiem is an extraordinary meeting-place of musical cultures – western classical, Saami yoik, folk-dance, electric rock, blues, improv and more. It takes the form of a journey to Saajva, the Kingdom of Death in Saami religious practice. In this death Mass the Swedish organist Gunnar Idenstam and Saami artist Ola Stinnerbom provide a parallel to the Christian Requiem, with Ola Stinnerbom as noite, the shaman who acts as guide to the Kingdom of Death – and back to this life, celebrated in the uplifting closing hymn. Some of the percussion sounds are sampled from traditional Saami drums made by Ola Stinnerbom after ancient models; the electric guitars provide a link to rock groups like Deep Purple, and Gunnar Idenstam’s unmistakable style marries the French organ tradition with the captivating world of Swedish folk-music.

REVIEWS:

Is it recommended? It is, and not least on account of its amalgamation of traditional with composed music such as leaves a tangible emotional resonance. Idenstam and Stinnerbom’s succinct annotations cover the background to this project and take the listener deftly yet surely through its various stages.

-- Arcana.FM

This album explores music by three generations of the Tcherepnin family of composers: Nikolai, Alexander and Ivan. Although each wrote a wide range of scores, from solo pieces to operas and ballets, this recording focuses on their chamber music, presenting pieces spanning 95 years. Nikolai's works for violin and piano reveal a late-Romantic, post-Tchaikovskian sensibility, whereas those of Alexander have a more modern, twentieth-century touch, closer to the style of his friend Sergei Prokofiev (a student of his father). Ivan is represented by two works - early and late - for flute, clarinet and piano, which have an improvisatory and playful quality.

REVIEW:

Chamber music from three generations and almost 100 years from the Tcherepnin family, is presented on this CD. The family is represented by Nikolai, Alexander and Ivan. The works for violin and piano are by Nikolai and Alexander. Ivan is represented by compositions for flute, clarinet and piano. In five cases these are premiere recordings. Their music always develops on the basis of their Russian roots, which also leads to folk-song sounding elements. However, other influences always play into the music, such as expressionism in Nikolai’s case, Peruvian culture in Ivan’s, and in the well-traveled Alexander’s diverse influences and penchant for hexachordal scales alternating semitones and minor thirds. These recordings from a concert performance offer an opportunity to get acquainted with this assemblage of three generations of musicians – the fourth is not represented here. By far the best known, Alexander, is represented with his violin sonata and three small works for this instrumentation. The internationally experienced performers, all of whom have a connection to the United States, particularly Boston, offer a carefully crafted and spiritedly presented picture of these works by the three composers in mature performances.

-- Pizzicato

Joseph Woelfl (1773-1812), a friend of the Mozart family from childhood, was one of the best-known musicians of his day: he was regarded as a rival of Beethoven in Vienna and a worthy successor to Haydn in the musical life of London. His late-Classical piano music sits between Mozart, Haydn and Clementi and looks forward to Schubert and Mendelssohn. This first-ever project to examine it in any detail hopes to rescue Woelfl's once starry reputation from the folds of history. The three sonatas which open this second volume are dedicated 'a Mr L. Van Beethoven'.

Timothy Roberts, born in Hampstead, north London, in 1953, has been a mainstay of the early-music scene in Britain and further afield for decades. He is best known as a keyboard player, but in recent years composing has been of growing importance to him. Hardly surprisingly, his music refracts the Baroque and Classical worlds in which he is active, usually with a playful but respectful twist.

Noah Max – born into a musical family in London in 1998 – has already carved out an impressive career as a composer and conductor; he is also an accomplished painter and a poet. For someone so young, the surprise of this debut album is the sense of loss unifying these pieces. The feeling of innocence forgone is characteristic of the music of many English composers in the first half of the twentieth century, Elgar, Finzi, Howells and Vaughan Williams among them. Max’s music is clearly of its own time, but it shares the elegiac lyricism of those earlier masters.

The 24 Preludes of Adam Gorb (born in Cardiff in 1958 and a feature of musical life in Manchester for over two decades) follow the examples of Chopin and Shostakovich in describing a cycle of fifths – though his descend, whereas Chopin’s and Shostakovich’s go up. Like those earlier exemplars, as also the preludes of Debussy, Rachmaninov and others, Gorb’s are miniature studies of personality and mood – charming, brittle, perky, languorous, bat-flight fast, borderline violent or tender, as required. His Velocity does what it says on the can: it’s a wild, even manic, chase, over rhythmically dislocating ground.

This third volume of orchestral music by the Anglo-French composer Steve Elcock (b. 1957) features two symphonies and a quasi-concerto. Over the course of its two movements, the Sixth Symphony, subtitled Tyrants Destroyed, moves from grief to outrage, rising to a grimly triumphant conclusion. The one-movement Seventh – with some of its material derived from the words of a song Elcock heard in a dream – runs a gamut of emotion, from anger to heartbreak, in its impassioned narrative. Manic Dancing, a piano concerto in all but name, inhabits a complex world of driving rhythms, nostalgic flashbacks and hectic dance music – buoyant and good-natured, like Martinu on speed.

In spite of the differences of time and distance, the choral works of the Australian composer Andrew Anderson (born in Melbourne in 1971) further the English cathedral tradition of such composers as Finzi and Howells, in music concerned particularly with lyricism and with clarity and directness of expression. The Consort of Melbourne is Melbourne's premier vocal ensemble, comprising eight of the city's finest chamber singers under the artistic direction of Steven Hodgson. Typically performing a capella with one singer per part, The Consort champions both historic and contemporary repertoire and was founded in 2008 by Warren Trevelyan-Jones and Peter Tregear. It is inspired by the best European musical traditions, to which it brings a uniquely Australian freshness and vitality.

The name of Mary Howe (1882–1964) seems to have vanished from the history books. But she was an important voice in American music in the first half of the twentieth century, as an activist and organizer and, especially, as a composer. This pioneering album of her songs shows her late-Romantic style open to influences from Debussy, Mahler, Richard Strauss and other contemporaries: she was, she said, ‘alert for new sensations, like a Puritan on a holiday’. Mary Howe was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1882. Her early musical training included studies in Germany with Richard Burmeister, a pupil of Liszt. She studied at the Peabody Conservatory of Music where she met Anne Hull with whom she formed a duo piano team that toured in recital from 1920-1935. In 1922, Howe became one of the few women at Peabody to have earned a diploma in composition at that time. With her three children, she appeared with the 4 Howes singing madrigals and early music. In 1930 she raised the money to found the Washington-based National Symphony Orchestra. Together with Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, she also founded the Chamber Music Society of Washington. In 1925 or 1926 she worked with Amy Beach to organize the Association of American Women Composers. A short period of coaching with Nadia Boulanger in Paris is 1933 marked the end of her formal training. Her diverse catalogue of compositions comprises more than two hundred titles, including works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, chorus, piano, and art songs for solo voice.

Born in Ukraine, Thomas de Hartmann (1885–1956), a student of both Arensky and Taneyev, achieved fame as a composer in Russia in the early 1900s, and his concert music was later played by some of the major musicians of the day, primarily in Paris. Since his death, he has been remembered mainly for his association with the Caucasian mystic, G. I. Gurdjieff, whom he met in 1916, and his output for the concert hall has fallen into obscurity. The four works receiving their first recordings here reveal a major late-Romantic voice, downstream from Tchaikovsky, contemporary with Rachmaninov, and alert to the discoveries of Stravinsky and Prokofiev.

REVIEWS:

What’s the music like? Although the Noëls Ukrainiens might appear as the descendent of folk-inspired sets by such as Rimsky-Korsakov or Lyadov, de Hartmann seeks rather to evoke the essence of this music than by quoting traditional melodies. The initial Chant spiritual for strings is a pertinent case in point – its textural and expressive restraint characteristic of what follows, notably the more developed final numbers: the chorale-like solemnity of La veille de l’Épiphanie, simmering fervour of Adieu, Koladá and Mussorgskian vigour of Goussak for an effervescent ending.

Is it recommended? Yes, not least with the Lviv National Philharmonic giving of its best under the astute direction of Theodore Kuchar. Unexceptionally fine sound, with exceptionally detailed annotations from John R. Mangan and Evan A. MacCarthy. A follow-up volume of de Hartmann is imminent.

-- Arcana.FM

Corentin Boissier was born in the suburbs of Paris in 1995. For a composer still only in his twenties, he writes music that is unusually direct in its emotional expression and robust and confident in its musical language. His Cello Sonata, in the grand Romantic tradition of Brahms and Rachmaninov, is animated by a wild and resolute energy; and his buoyant Flute Sonata continues the line of the French flute classics of the first half of the twentieth century. The darker Piano Trio sits downstream from those of Debussy, Ravel and, especially, Fauré. All three works bid fair to become major contributions to their genre.

The Australian writer Henry Handel Richardson (1870–1946) was christened Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson: she adopted a male nom de plume in anticipation of professional prejudice. Although she made in international reputation as a novelist, she first trained as a pianist and wrote songs all her life – but they remained unpublished, so that her output as a composer has been completely overlooked until now. Her songs are straightforward and melodious, drawing their inspiration from Romantic German Lieder and Edwardian drawing-room ballads, lullabies and parlor songs in the manner of Bridge, Ireland, Quilter and other such composers.