The musical language of the New York-based Arnold Rosner (1945–2013) had its roots in the modal harmony and rhythm of pre-Baroque polyphony and evolved in an array of unusual directions, producing a style that is instantly recognizable and immediately appealing – as can be heard in the three works on this recording. Rosner’s Nocturne suggests the immensity – and the implacable violence – of outer space, whereas his overture Tempus Perfectum has its starting point in Renaissance dance. The monumental Sixth Symphony opens with music of volcanic ferocity and vehemence; the central Adagio then provides an island of troubled calm before the dignified opening of the finale presages a symphonic Allegro of wild, freewheeling energy; only when its immense force is spent does this powerful masterpiece sink to an uneasy close.

REVIEWS:

I first came across Arnold Rosner’s music on a 1990 Harmonia Mundi Modern Masters CD of tonal American 20th Century music, reviewed here and here (in a later reissue), and now available only as a download or second-hand. The work recorded there, the Responses, Hosanna and Fugue, was so evidently influenced by Vaughan Williams’s Tallis Fantasia that I was intrigued, to say the least.

This disc begins with the Nocturne Op.68, in which Rosner sought to suggest the movement of planetary bodies in the vastness of space. He tried to do this by initially evoking a mysterious swirling atmosphere that is occasionally interrupted by violent outbursts. Melodic fragments gradually coalesce into a melody for strings, which is further developed and intensified by the inclusion of the rest of the orchestra. Like many such ‘descriptive’ pieces composed over the last 150 years, one would never guess at the underlying creative stimulus, but that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable.

It is followed by Tempus Perfectum: A Concert Overture. Its archaic title reflects Rosner’s modern adaptation of a medieval form in 98 metre. Rosner was interested in early music and here he uses a type of canzona notable for its markedly rhythmic material and separation into distinct sections. The effect is of triads superimposed on the main theme at various points, and the work, which sounds markedly antique, gradually achieves a much more modern climax on (predominantly) strings and trumpets, before dying away.

The most impressive work on this superlatively recorded and performed CD, is Rosner’s 6th Symphony. Its first movement is one of extreme emotional turbulence, represented by ferociously explosive rather angular music that lasts for its ten-minute duration. I am strongly reminded of the first movement of the Vaughan Williams Fourth Symphony, although Rosner is not quite so dour.

I don’t think there can be much doubt that throughout the Symphony this influence persists, and the Sinfonia Antartica informs the second, slow movement. In fact, I am indelibly reminded of the ‘Landscape’ movement of the RVW work. Having said that, Rosner doesn’t quite manage to conjure up the stupefying power so evident in the Antartica, despite a slightly more colorful orchestral palette and a willingness to use the tam-tam almost to abandon. RVW brings an organ to the shattering climax of his symphony, but an organ is one instrument not employed by Rosner. The movement begins in a hushed atmosphere, with a slightly oriental sounding theme. This is developed towards the emotional centre of the movement where the composer’s use of strings (to emphasize the melody) is gradually superseded by the appearance of woodwind, brass and percussion to great effect.

His gift of writing impactive and indeed, memorable music, is very noticeable throughout the work, but particularly so in this movement and in the last, where RVW in ‘galumphing’ mode makes an appearance early on. A reliance on the cymbals and later, the tam-tam disturbs me a little – this is a trait that is very evident in the works of some contemporary American tonal composers, perhaps influenced, however subconsciously, by film music. Notwithstanding, since I love the sound of cymbals and tam-tam in a sumptuous orchestral panoply, I will remain only very slightly disturbed and revel in the sheer orchestral splendour of the whole thing. The final five minutes or so of the last movement begin with an ethereal woodwind solo, which appears repeatedly, sometimes on the brass, only to be interrupted by cataclysmic eruptions. The movement fades into silence with quiet recollections of earlier themes.

Throughout this CD the recording is truly splendiferous and the playing of the LPO is virtuosic beyond praise. It must be wonderful to hear these pieces performed live by this top-notch orchestra under the baton of a committed conductor, such as we have here in Nick Palmer. The booklet is detailed and informative in both biographical and musical detail. Toccata Classics are to be congratulated and praised for this release, consisting as it does entirely of first recordings. I look forward to others in the series.

-- MusicWeb International (Jim Westhead)

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

Like his close friend and colleague Shostakovich Shebalin (1902-63) knew a life of both celebrity and hardship. He was condemned in the infamous '48 Party congress in Moscow and in later life he fought to overcome a series of crippling strokes. His personality remained undaunted by these tribulations as his music resolutely proves.

While I was thoroughly enjoying myself listening to this disc an analogy sprang to mind regarding 19 ^th Century war-horse piano transcriptions. It struck me that – from a 'modern' perspective – they are rather like a great steam locomotive, totally redundant and outmoded but actually rather inspiring and a triumph of engineering!
 
I have written before that I have an enduring pleasure in hearing a good transcription of something utterly preposterous ... and what could be more preposterous than transcribing Wagner’s Ring for solo piano? The key to raising both the transcription and indeed the performance of it hangs on several far less absurd considerations. These are as follows. How well does the transcriber retain the essence of the work in question? How successfully does the transcriber satisfy the twin musical imperatives of writing a work pleasing as both a virtuoso piano piece and as ‘simple’ music? Lastly, how well is the performer able to surmount the vast technical hurdles implied by the genre whilst producing a performance of real musical value? The reason for my pleasure in this disc is that on every count I would have to say: very well indeed.
 
To start with the composer/transcriber; August Stradal was yet another of those acolytes of Liszt who seem to have spent a good part of their creative careers trying to out-arrange their master. One can imagine an unspoken conflict between Liszt’s many disciples each trying desperately to produce piano music of ever greater complexity and virtuosity. Along the way Stradal had Bruckner as a teacher and in later life provided important biographical information on both those masters. He also transcribed Bruckner’s Symphonies 1-2 and 5-8 for piano … now there’s a project for Toccata to consider! For those interested the Bruckner transcriptions as well as the 2 Liszt Symphonies, Brandenburg No.3 and other works too can be viewed and downloaded from the IMSLP website – unfortunately none of the works recorded here can be so viewed.
 
I quite enjoy playing a little game when listening to transcriptions such as this – it’s called “count the imaginary fingers”. The closer you get to twenty the better. Pianist Juan Guillermo Vizcarra makes a staggeringly powerful case for these transcriptions and he is no mean interpreter of Wagner either. The six excerpts from the Ring are grouped sensibly together in chronological order. Hence the disc opens with three selections from Die Walküre. The first two are rather dwarfed by an extended transcription of its closing pages. Siegmund’s Love-song comes first and shows Stradal’s skill at retaining the original voicing of the opera with the hero ‘singing’ in the middle register of the keyboard and the ‘orchestra’ fully represented above and below. Vizcarra is especially skilled at layering the dynamics within these complex textures ensuring that the ear is guided to primary and secondary material. He is a very dynamic player – his performance had me thinking back to the days of LPs and Michael Ponti’s trail-blazing discs on Vox-Turnabout of various Opera paraphrases. Occasionally I did wonder if Vizcarra was overly-muscular which, allied to a quite close and dynamic recording, does risk ‘virtuosity-awareness-fatigue-syndrome’. Conversely, this is music that should overwhelm one in whatever format it is performed. Vizcarra goes on to prove that he is by no means ‘just’ a virtuoso. Indeed I found his pacing of the seventeen minute selection from the end of Die Walküre very impressive. Likewise the single excerpt from Siegfried – Forest Murmurs – is beautifully paced. I say this even if just occasionally the leading melodic line feels a fraction heavy in comparison to the accompanying material but I do feel rather mean-spirited mentioning this.
 
Malcolm MacDonald in his predictably fascinating and insightful liner cites the two Götterdämmerung excerpts as representing the apogee of Stradal’s art with regard to Wagner. Certainly the sheer complexity of textures that he is able to retain from the original version of Siegfried’s Rhine Journey is astonishing. Again I find Vizcarra’s pacing of the closing pages which then lead with seamless skill into Siegfried’s Funeral March wholly convincing. Given that so much of the orchestral texture in this extraordinarily valedictory passage is built on long-held chords building crescendi this is the one time a piano struggles to maintain the illusion of the original. This is for the simple and obvious fact that a piano cannot play a crescendo without repeating a note or chord. That aside Vizcarra is a very impressive interpreter and Stradal’s transcription builds to a remarkably powerful climax replete with little sky-bursts of keyboard flurries and virtuoso gestures.
 
Sensibly, the final third of the disc is devoted to a far less rhetorical and grandly dramatic transcription of the five Wesendonck Lieder. These do already exist in the original version for piano and voice. MacDonald explains that Stradal stays essentially faithful to Wagner’s original except in two respects; he changes the order of the songs and moves the vocal line into the middle register again whilst at the same time moving Wagner’s right-hand piano part up the octave. This has the twin effect of making that element of the accompaniment sound immediately more ‘brilliant’ whilst keeping the now inner vocal line clear of conflicting part-writing. Vizcarra is beautifully poetic throughout the cycle although again I occasionally wondered if he strove too hard to give the inner/vocal line prominence. Especially since the placing of this line in a tenor/baritone register changes the feel quite significantly from their mezzo-soprano original. Again this seems like minor carping when one has been given the opportunity to hear such startlingly effective transcriptions in such convincing performances.
 
Toccata Classics is one of my favourite labels with the questing and quirky nature of the repertoire they offer very much a reflection on the tastes and passions their founder and executive producer Martin Anderson. This disc is another excellent example of his sure-fire sense of rare and unknown music well worth restoring and exploring. More Wagner please but a set of the Bruckner transcriptions really would be something.
 
-- Nick Barnard, MusicWeb International

The Austrian composer Walter Bricht (1904-70) was one of many musicians of Jewish ancestry who fled Vienna after the Anschluss for the safety of the USA; Bricht became a valued professor at Indiana University in Bloomington. Fittingly, it is the nearby Fort Wayne Philharmonic, in its own debut recording, that has made the first album of Bricht’s music. The recording reveals another major Viennese voice and points to yet another potentially important career cut off in the bud by the Nazis. Bricht was reportedly Franz Schmidt’s favorite student, and the late-Romantic styles of the two men are indeed very closely aligned in their mix of Baroque counterpoint, Classical form and Wagnerian chromatic harmony: Bricht’s Symphony in A minor might almost be Schmidt’s No. 5.

Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst (1812-65) was one of the leading musicians of his day, a friend of Berlioz, Chopin, Liszt and Mendelssohn, and for Joseph Joachim 'the greatest violinist I ever heard'. This sixth album - in a series of seven presenting all his compositions for the first time - begins and ends with some of the most difficult music for solo violin ever composed: Ernst's Six Polyphonic Studies (the last of which is a set of variations on 'The Last Rose of Summer') and his transcription of Schubert's song, Der Erlkonig. Between these pieces come some less familiar fare: five Schubertian piano pieces, and two settings of Goethe.

The first two Toccata Classics volumes of the orchestral music of the English composer David Hackbridge Johnson presented three mighty symphonies, conceived on a large scale and powerful in their utterance. The Fifteenth Symphony, tone-poems and other works offered here show a change in focus: an engagement with the natural world, reflecting the poetry of changing light and shifting winds, with man's impermanent presence dwarfed by the implacable grandeur of nature. Here Paul Mann, a frequent Toccata Classics artist, conducts the orchestra of the very town- Liepaja, on the coast of Latvia- that inspired the Fifteenth Symphony.

The American composer George Antheil (1900–59) enjoyed the sobriquet ‘the Bad Boy of Music’ thanks to the mechanistic scores of his early career. This anthology of piano music from the last twenty years of his life reveals a muse that could also be affectionate, flirtatious and capricious – but the ‘Bad Boy’ occasionally re-emerged, as in the diabolical mischief of the wild, peppery, Prokofievan toccatas also recorded here. Ms. Judy Pang is increasingly on demand as an inventive solo and chamber musician with eclectic repertoire. She has established herself as a performer of works both mainstream and contemporary. Alongside her dedication to a wide-ranging selection from the canon of piano repertoire, she has continued her scholarly study of French impressionist music, on which she has given lecture recitals both in New York and Shanghai. Her numerous performances have taken her as far afield as the US, UK, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Finland, Australia and China.

This recording of music by Ernest Krenek follows on from Toccata Classics’ wildly successful recording, in two albums, of his complete piano concertos. It covers almost half a century of his compositions, and shows the sheer range of his creativity. There are early piano fugues written for his teacher, Franz Schreker, via elegant fin de siècle Viennese lyricism to a relaxed application of Schoenberg’s dodecaphonic technique- often enlivened with a surprising degree of charm and a knowing sense of humor. The Ernst Krenek Ensemble is joined here by three of the finest lieder singers currently active, Laura Aikin, Bernarda Fink, and Florian Boesch. The Ernst Krenek Ensemble has set itself the task of introducing Ernst Krenek’s important and extensive chamber music oeuvre to the programmes of international concert halls, although its repertoire also includes works by composers such as Schubert and Beethoven, who provided Krenek with important stimulus. Its musicians delve with special curiosity into Krenek’s less familiar works and reveal the many colorful facets of his substantial output. Concerts have taken the ensemble throughout Europe and the USA.

Heinz Tiessen (1887-1971) was one of the most prominent composers of the Weimar Republic, but his career was abruptly halted during WWII as his music was deemed "undesirable" by the Nazi Party. Tiessen's compositions never re-emerged from that cultural embargo and largely sank into obscurity until now. The American born, Berlin based pianist Matthew Rubinstein is a fine ambassador for this overlooked composer's piano works which include Eine Natur Trilogie, a three-part symphonic poem for piano.

Like Korngold, Toch, Schoenberg, Zeisl and Zemlinsky, Richard Stöhr (1874–1967) was another Austrian composer driven into American exile by the Nazis. His generous output of music – ripe for rediscovery – includes seven symphonies, fifteen violin sonatas among much other chamber music, songs, and choral and piano pieces. His expansive E flat Piano Trio of 1905 sits firmly in the Viennese Romantic tradition downstream from Schubert and Brahms, with one lovely tune following another, whereas the Three Songs, written only four years later, look forward to the lyrical intensity of Korngold. Violinist Laura Roelofs is currently Assistant Concertmaster of the Michigan Opera Theatre Orchestra and director of the string performance area at Wayne State University in Detroit. Stefan Koch is a frequent performer with the Kalamazoo Symphony, West Michigan Symphony, Toledo Symphony, and Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestras. Mary Siciliano has a successful private studio and gives pedagogy workshops throughout the USA. The bass-baritone Seth Keeton is an Assistant Professor of Voice at the University of Utah School of Music.

Adolf Busch (1891–1952) enjoys a reputation as one of the great violinists: his Busch Quartet Beethoven recordings have never been surpassed. But Busch was also a major composer, equally natural as contrapuntist and melodist, with a style that owed much to Max Reger. Yet, always a man of principle, he sacrificed his career as both violinist and composer with his dignified refusal to perform or be performed in Nazi Germany. This second CD of his lyrical writing for clarinet, one in a series of recordings of Busch’s light-filled chamber music, extends the rediscovery of this once leading musician.

The case of the composer Hans Winterberg (1901–91) is a strange one. A survivor of the Terezín concentration camp, where he had been interned as a Czech Jew, after the War he settled in Munich as a German citizen, and his music enjoyed a number of broadcasts – but after his death, his estate disappeared into the vaults of the Sudeten German Music Institute, where it was placed under embargo, emerging only in 2015. This first album of his music reveals an unusual and individual voice, an idiosyncratic blend of Stravinsky, Janácek and Hindemith, with touches of Poulenc, often expressed with brittle humor and rhythmic verve. The Arizona Wind Quintet is the faculty ensemble-in-residence at the University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music in Tucson. Formed in 1977, the AWQ has cultivated a tradition of excellence in both performance and teaching. The other instrumentalists on this recording are distinguished musicians active in the Tucson area, several of them teaching at the Fred Fox School of Music, although they appear in concert and at festivals all over North America.

This fourth album in the Toccata Classics survey of the chamber music of London-born Stephen Dodgson (1924–2013) offers a first installment of his many works for woodwinds. Much of it brings Dodgson’s sense of fun to the fore, often through rhythmic mischief or an insouciance that recalls Poulenc, but it also has that particularly English strain of lyricism that suggests the impermanence of beauty. British composer and broadcaster Stephen Dodgson’s prolific musical output covered most genres, ranging from opera and large-scale orchestral music to chamber and instrumental music, as well as choral works and song. He wrote in a tonal, though sometimes unconventional, idiom. Paul Griffiths, in The Oxford Companion to Music, writes that Dodgson “proved adept at producing likable, well-crafted music to order, often for unusual chamber ensembles.”

The orchestral music of the English composer David Hackbridge Johnson (b. 1963) is one of the most important discoveries to have been made by Toccata Classics. This second volume brings two mighty symphonies: the dark and tragic No. 10 (2013), cast in a single monumental span, and the three-movement No. 13 (2017), a fierce and fiery affirmation of life. They are complemented here by an orchestral ‘motet’ which passes plainchant in kaleidoscopic review. Writing in Gramophone, Guy Rickards said of Hackbridge Johnson’s Ninth Symphony: “what is so astonishing is not his ambition in attempting such large, big-boned structures… but that he possesses the compositional technique to achieve them so completely… This is a profound, complex, and visionary utterance.” Paul Mann, who here leads the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, is a regular guest conductor with many orchestras throughout Europe, the USA, Australia and the Far East. He enjoyed a famous collaboration with the legendary rock group Deep Purple and was a close friend of its keyboardist Jon Lord. He first came to international attention as first prizewinner in the Donatella Flick Conducting Competition, and as a result was appointed assistant conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. This is his twelfth project with Toccata Classics.

Fridrich Bruk- born in Kharkov in 1937 and a Finnish resident since 1974- made his name as a composer of tangos. But the heart of his music lies in a series of eighteen symphonies, which have a strong narrative elemtn, some reflecting Jewish themes, others inspired by Karelia and Finland. Symphony No. 17, Joy of Life, has an autobiographical programme charting, in abstract terms, Bruk’s surmounting of the obstacles fate put in his path. Symphony No. 18 takes as its starting point a Latvian-Jewish folksong: it is premised on the deportation of his grandparents from their Latvian home, in an anti-Semitic campaign by Tsarist Russia that Bruk sees as a kind of prologue to the Holocaust. Gertruda Jerjomenko is a Latvian pianist and harpsichordist. She made her solo debut in a CPE Bach concerto with the Baroque orchestra Collegium Musicum Riga under the guidance of Maris Kupcs and has since appeared at concerts and festivals as a soloist, chamber and orchestra music, in Latvia and abroad.

The organ music of Joan (or Juan) Cabanilles (1644–1712) is virtuosic and colourfully Baroque, and touched with a distinctively Spanish intensity. Cabanilles is claimed as the most prolific of all composers for the organ, and publication of his works, begun in 1927, has not caught up with his output. But the surviving manuscripts can be seriously corrupt, requiring extensive editing and sometimes even detailed recomposition. This recording – Volume Three of an ongoing series – therefore uses a number of new editions to present the music as never heard before, as close as possible to what the composer might have intended. It was made using the historic (1732) organ in the Basilica of Sant Jaume in Vila-real, Valencia. Timothy Roberts was for twenty years principal keyboard of the Gabrieli Consort and Players; he also became director of His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts. In recent years he has also been active as a recording engineer and sound editor, composer and music-typesetter.

Classical Music

The ability of record companies to spring surprises on the public is always pleasant, and here Toccata Classics gives us the opportunity to hear what must be one of the very first American symphonies. Leopold Damrosch is almost unknown nowadays, but his son Walter was for many years the principal conductor of the New York Philharmonic, and the father himself also conducted that body giving the American premières of the Brahms First Symphony and the Berlioz Requiem. Damrosch left Germany for the USA in 1871 and remained there for the remaining thirteen years of his life, during which time he wrote this four-movement symphony; but he never heard it played, and it remained unpublished and in manuscript until 2005 when it was finally edited for performance. This recording was made immediately following the première on 8 February 2015, and it reveals a fascinating if uneven work.

It is unfortunate that the disc begins with the Festival Overture written immediately before Damrosch’s departure for America and dedicated to Georg II, the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen. The booklet note discerns some influences of Wagner, especially Die Meistersinger; but any Wagnerian overtones are less than immediately apparent, bearing comparison (if at all) to some of the overblown marches that Wagner wrote for cash towards the end of his career. The tone is unremittingly loud and overblown; and that impression is reinforced by a closely observed recording in a claustrophobic acoustic which serves only to emphasize the thick brass writing and Damrosch’s reliance on busy string figuration which sometimes fails to achieve an ideal balance, shading into pure decoration. After the symphony the disc concludes with Damrosch’s orchestration of Schubert, a piece which the booklet informs us was popular with American audiences during the composer’s lifetime, but which rarely rises about the workaday.

No, the real piece of interest on this disc is the unpublished and previously unperformed symphony, and I mean no disrespect to the young players here when I say that one can imagine a better case being made out for the work. I have already noted the claustrophobic acoustic — like a confined broadcasting studio. We should also note the questionable balances which bring out the heavy brass at the expenses of the strings (and especially the violins), although these are not as serious in the symphony as in the more stridently scored other items on the disc. The playing is not always impeccable — there appears to be a split horn note very near the opening of the first movement, or at least an appoggiatura which fails to sound convincing — and although one can hear that the violins are working hard and achieving commendable degrees of accuracy they remain overshadowed by the sonorous trumpets and trombones. The woodwind playing, on the other hand, is superbly executed and well observed by the recording. Add to this the committed conducting of Christopher Russell, and booklet notes which are both informative and substantial, and we have here an issue which is of rather more than purely documentary interest. I am amazed that the composer’s son failed to program the symphony with the New York Philharmonic when he was their conductor – maybe he was unaware of its existence – but its revival is decidedly welcome. Perhaps American professional orchestras might care to look at it now that Azusa Pacific have broken the trail.

The conductor’s own booklet essay makes much of the parallels between the music of Damrosch and that of Wagner and Brahms, but the echoes seem to me to be much closer to Bruckner especially in the more atmospheric pages. The opening quiet string tremolos conjure up a definitely Brucknerian feel, and the episodic construction of the rest of the movement also has traces of that composer — but would Damrosch have heard any of the symphonies? The short second-movement Intermezzo is charming; and the solemn march of the third movement builds to a tremendous climax, crowned by a stroke on the gong, and including some positively manic episodes. After this lengthy movement, the most extended in the symphony, the finale is comparatively brief and conventional. As I have already observed Christopher Russell, whose explorations of rare repertory have included first American performances of symphonies by Havergal Brian and Robert Simpson, clearly relishes the music and manages to make it cohere even when it is at its most waywardly rhapsodic.

One more minor cause for complaint in this disc is the ridiculously short breaks between individual tracks – not just between movements in the symphony, but at the beginning and end of that work as well. The result is that the atmospheric slow introduction sounds almost like an odd sort of continuation of the raucous Festival Overture; and even more seriously, the arrival of the Schubert arrangement comes as a real shock immediately after the closing bars of the symphony’s finale. The listener will need to stand by the pause button at these points, but otherwise Toccata’s presentation is impeccable. This label’s restless exploration of the outermost fringes of the repertory is always fascinating, and the Damrosch symphony here deserves rather more than polite intellectual interest.

– MusicWeb International (Paul Corfield Godfrey)

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.

Ernst Krenek’s seven piano concertos – four for solo piano, one for two pianos, one with violin and one with organ – is one of the major concerto-series of the twentieth century, but perhaps also the least familiar. This second installment in their first complete recording reveals breath-taking bravura writing – in the virtuoso piano technique, the dazzling orchestration and the stylistic integration of serialism and good-natured recollection of Viennese tradition. Mikhail Korzhev is a pianist that “projects strength, atmosphere and the ability to tangle even the knottiest passages…” (International Record Review). He is equally active as a solo recitalist, performer with various chamber groups, a soloist with orchestras, and as a recording artist. The first installment in this series received enthusiastic reviews in Gramophone, Diapason, and many other sources, and instantly made it to the shortlist of best new releases by Sunday Times (London) and Fanfare magazine.

This release includes one of Joachim Raff's major chamber works, the sonata for Cello and Piano of 1973, in its first recording. All the pieces here underline the importance of melody in Raff's music. This anthology is a treasure trove of lovely tunes, which Raff can spin with Schumannesque urgency and Schubertian charm.

Georgiy Eduardovich Conus (1862–1933) is one of the astonishing number of gifted Russian composer-pianists who helped shape what is known as the ‘Silver Age’ of Russian music, but whose achievements have since been obscured by the music of Rachmaninov and others. This first-ever recording of his piano music reveals a composer with his roots in Tchaikovsky, a harmonic sophistication akin to Skriabin’s and an emotional range that stretches from an easy-going charm to dramatic and powerful keyboard virtuosity. Jonathan Powell has established a reputation as one of the most fearless pianists currently active, spending his concert seasons touring blockbuster piano works. In the past decade he has presented the cycle of Scriabin’s ten sonatas in single concerts, Messiaen’s ‘Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jesus,’ Albeniz’s ‘Iberia,’ Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata, Reger’s Bach Variations, and more. This is his sixth recording for Toccata Classics.

Whatever your views on the music or the performance, that this recording exists at all is an extraordinary story, and due congratulations must be offered to the hard work and dedication of all involved, in particular of Jennifer Condon. Her “normal” job is as a prompter at the Hamburg Opera, but she has been responsible for editing this previously unpublished work, preparing it for performance, persuading a large and distinguished cast to take part, in some cases without any remuneration, as well as conducting the performance. This shows a commitment to the work that may seem eccentric to the cynical but heroic to others who have laboured in vain on behalf of other similarly neglected works.
 
Peggy Glanville-Hicks was an Australian composer whose teachers included Vaughan Williams, Egon Wellesz and Nadia Boulanger, who was married for a time to Stanley Bate, another neglected composer, and who spent twenty years in New York before moving to Greece and finally back to Australia. Her other works include the opera The Transposed Heads, commissioned by the Louisville Orchestra and recorded by them in the 1950s and in 1984 by the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. I have listened many times to both recordings with increasing pleasure so that I have been very eager to hear the present discs.
 
Sappho is a setting of an adaptation by the composer of a verse play by Lawrence Durrell. It tells of the Lesbian (but not lesbian) poet Sappho in her latter years when she was married to a wealthy local merchant, Kreon. The various scenes show her with the twin brothers, Pittakos and Phaon, with her tutor, Minos, and with Diomedes, a drunken poet. Towards the end she is exiled to Corinth on a false charge of incest. Her final monologue, the only part of the opera to have been publicly performed, is the clear climax of the opera, with Sappho accepting the impermanence of personal relationships as well as of her own life. It mirrors similar scenes at the end of operas by Strauss and Janácek, albeit that it is very different in its musical style. That style derives to a great degree from the composer’s attempt to reduce the importance of harmony in music, and to throw the emphasis instead on texture and tone, melody and heterophony. The result may seem a little bland at first but the listener soon adjusts to the composer’s very individual style.
 
A quick glance at the cast list shows several distinguished Wagnerian singers. Very surprisingly that appears to have been a necessity due to the weight of some of the orchestration. The conductor’s note indicates that she believes that with adjustment to dynamics and some of the orchestration it could be performed on a smaller scale, and I have to say that this would be welcome. In fact the ideal might be to retain the Wagner-sized voices but allow them to sing at somewhat less than full power. That would permit a more nuanced approach to performance and a more natural delivery of the, admittedly somewhat flowery, text. I am full of admiration for the cast here, who have taken on a major new work with obvious enthusiasm, but it has to be admitted that for much of the time there is a lack of any attempt at light or shade in their singing. The many singers for whom English is not their first language cope well but it cannot be said that the result sounds idiomatic. Admittedly the results in the case of the English-speaking artists are not all that much better, and although I attempted to follow what was being sung without it after a while I found myself wholly dependent on the printed libretto to understand what was being said or even who was saying it.
 
Sappho is by no means as immediately attractive as is The Transposed Heads, partly due to an apparent preponderance of slow or slowish music, but enough is revealed through this very welcome issue to suggest that subject to the preparation of a performance edition that would make it kinder to singers and to a greater familiarity with the work it would certainly merit stage performance. In the meantime we should once again thank Jennifer Condon for her untiring efforts to make it possible to hear the work and all the singers and players who helped her in this. Congratulations also to Toccata Classics whose presentation of the issue, with essays on the work, the edition, Durrell and Sappho, together with the full libretto, does all that could be done to help the listener and encourage understanding of this important discovery.
 
-- John Sheppard, MusicWeb International

New York based composer Arnold Rosner (1945-2013) composed in a style that was thick with pre-Baroque polyphonic modal harmonies and rhythms, and rich with Romantic colors, creating his own unique style. Opening this album is his piano concerto, which, incredibly, was composed before Rosner had any formal musical training. This is the first release from the London Philharmonic Orchestra on Toccata Classics.

REVIEW:

It is encouraging to see that interest in Arnold Rosner’s music continues even after his death in 2013 at the age of 68. One of his major champions has long been Fanfare writer Walter Simmons, and his notes accompanying this disc are as good as it gets. Another of his champions has been David Amos, who has conducted many of Rosner’s works in the past.

Rosner’s style is hard to describe. On the surface, one can say that his music is conservative, tuneful, and easily accessible to any audience. But that makes it sound too simplistic and perhaps unoriginal. The more of Rosner’s music one hears, the more one learns that he has his own unique sound. Some of that is because of his interest in modal harmonies and the polyphony found in early music. But he also reveals a slight jazz influence (particularly noticeable in the outer movements of his Piano Concerto here). Most importantly, there is an emotional truth in his compositions. It never sounds like empty effects, nor is it solely written to entertain. While he never minimizes the value of entertainment, neither does Rosner shrink from its power to move, to stir deeper emotions. The Largo of the Piano Concerto begins and ends calmly, but travels a huge distance that includes genuine emotional turmoil and struggle.

Gematria is a work influenced by the composer’s Jewish roots, taking its inspiration from Kabbalah mysticism, but not literally basing itself on the numerology central to that world. This work is haunting, and reading Simmons’s explanation of its structure is a great help in absorbing it. The music is brilliantly scored and gains in power and intensity as it goes, and then unwinds without ever fully relaxing.

Six Pastoral Dances is a suite that recalls (but doesn’t imitate) Respighi’s Ancient Dances and Airs, except that Rosner’s tunes are all original with him. The suite is lightly orchestrated for wind quartet and string orchestra, and while it strongly references an Elizabethan style and tone, Rosner’s voice is not completely subsumed. His signature use of chromaticism is evident throughout. These are very pleasant, piquant pieces that would be a meaningful addition to any chamber orchestra’s repertoire.

Aside from the Piano Concerto, the other major work on the disc is From the Diaries of Adam Czerniaków. To quote from Rosner’s own introduction to the score: “Adam Czerniaków was the Chairman of the Judenrat, or Jewish local government, in the Warsaw ghetto from 1939 (the beginning of the German occupation and administration of the ghetto) until 1942 when he took his own life during the time of mass deportation of the population to death camps in the east…”

Czerniaków kept a secret diary, excerpts of which are read by a narrator over dramatic and deeply moving music. As one would expect, this music is much darker, more somber, than much of Rosner’s output. At moments it sounds like a very effective Hollywood score. That is not meant as a backhanded compliment; the best film scores heighten the tension in the dramatic scene, and that is the way this score interacts with its text. The diary is read in an English translation, and in a powerful, understated way by Peter Riegert. One is grateful that Riegert avoids the temptation of turning melodramatic in reading this horrifying text, and it can be said that Rosner’s music also stays away from that pitfall. It is moving, at times even harrowing, but never cheap or sensationalistic. One central orchestral passage, from 12:47 of the piece, is extraordinarily poignant at first, then alternately desolate and proud in its character.

The performances and recording quality are first-rate. As indicated above, the accompanying notes are extremely insightful and informative. Strongly recommended.

-- Fanfare (Henry Fogel)