The Russian-born German-Swiss composer Paul Juon (1872-1940) produced a generous amount of piano music - no fewer than 35 opus numbers. That has yet to be explored in great details. This first instalment of the first-every survey of his piano music reveals a composer close to his Russian roots but also alive to the music of his own time. His style has much in common with Medtner and Rachmaninov, both friends from student days, but with a harmonic freedom that suggests Debussy. His inventive use of rhythm calls on folk influences from Azerbaijan, Armenia and elsewhere. This album is the first of a series of collaborations between Toccata Classics and Mexican musicians. The Mexican pianist Rodolfo Ritter is a frequent soloist with mos tof the major Mexican orchestras, performing the complete piano concertos of Bartok, Brhams, Brachmaninov, Shostakovich and Stravinsky, as well as less-well-known concertos by Martinu, Miguel Galvez-Taroncher and Xavier Scharwenka, alongside the world premieres of the Second Piano Concerto by Manuel Ponce, the Ricardo Castro Piano Concerto and the Second and Third Piano Concertos by Gonzalo Curiel, works which he has also recorded.

Known across Europe as “The Saxon,” Johann Adolph Hasse was extraordinarily popular as an operatic composer. Written for private performance in aristocratic palaces, his chamber cantatas gained him fame among the most wealthy and powerful, and are featured on this new recording. Early- music ensemble Hof-Musici specializes in period instrumentation and performance of Baroque music.

A contemporary and friend of Rachmaninov, Medtner and other major composer-pianists, Konstantin Romanovich Eiges (1875-1950), was a member of a gifted eastern Ukrainian Jewish family. His music bears the impress of his teacher Taneyev and of Scriabin and has points in common with his aforementioned friends, but deserves to be remembered in it's own right. This first-ever CD dedicated to this unjustly forgotten musical figure features Jonathan Powell, who knows Russian piano music of this period like few other musicians and has a reputation for tackling music of enormous difficulty.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Gerard Schurmann celebrates his 93rd birthday (earlier this year) with this third Toccata Classics album of his chamber music. Schurmann was born in the former Dutch East Indies in 1924, became a naturalized Briton (making a name for himself as a composer of film music while his lived in Britain) and is now a resident of Los Angeles. His two piano quartets, downstream from Bartok, Shostakovich and Britten, present a wide range of moods, from broad and stately tempi to passages of driving energy and excitement. He was in his mid-seventies when he wrote Piano Quartet No. 2 but it buzzes with youthful vigor. Their quasi-symphonic ambit is contrasted with the tart miniatures of the Serenade for solo violin and the tail-chasing vivacity of Two Violins - written only in 2015. The musicians on this release are mostly based in the Los Angeles area. The Lyris Quartet, founded in 2008, has premiered the music of many living composers. This is the group's second recording for 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 Swiss composer �mile Jaques-Dalcroze (1865-1950) is best remembered for his development of Eurhythmics, which teaches the appreciation of music through movement. But Jaques-Dalcroze, who studied with Delibes and Faur� in Paris and with Bruckner and Fuchs in Vienna, was a considerable composer in his own right, with operas, cantatas and orchestral works among his substantial output. These piano works, all written in the 1890s, are generally lighter in style, showing the influence of Schumann and the salons of Paris. Winner of several national and international prizes, the Milanese pianist Adalberto Maria Riva received a special mention at the International Competition of Music IBLA Grand Prize in 2008. This distinction allowed him to undertake a tour in the USA in April 2009 with a concert in Carnegie Hall. His repertoire ranges from Bach to contemporary composers, a sequence that he presents in a cycle of concert-conferences based on history and pianistic literature in a number of cultural and musical institutions across Europe.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

This is the second volume of a two-CD series presenting the first recording of the complete Chants in over 20 years; it also contains the world premiere recording of of Alkan's Chapeau bas! Playing a repertoire from the 18th to the 21st century, Stephanie McCallum is especially noted for her performances of virtuosic music of the 19th century, particularly the music of Liszt and Alkan, and also for her advocacy of demanding contemporary solo and ensemble scores.

Classical Music

Classical Music