The Toccata Classics Blog
24 Preludes Inspired by Debussy
It all began with a strange thought: what if a piece of music should suddenly forget all about itself, with only its name left behind…
George Enescu – A Musical Phenomenon
It all began with Noel Malcolm’s book, George Enescu: His Life and Music, published by none other than Toccata Press in 1990, which had been…
Arranging Wagner and the Ensuing Obsession
The release of Wagner by Arrangement, Volume Three (TOCC 0673), is the first part in a personal masterplan of Wagnerianism that has been going on for the…
Irmela Roelcke on Cloches et Carillons
My concert and recording project, Cloches et Carillons, impressed on me how much basic acoustic characteristics have influenced my most recent artistic interests and inclinations.…
A Radio Presenter’s Experience
I had long harboured the desire to present a radio programme. Years of growing up with radio in the 1950s had exposed me to mostly…
A Violist’s Bucket List
I am so happy to be able to participate in the Toccata blog and tell you a little about the two albums that have been…
The Reintroduction of Scotland’s Piano Music
An inadvertent benefit of the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 was that I had time to do lots of recording. I was able to record…
A Violist’s New CD Captures the Romance of Russian Sonatas
Article in the University of Denver Magazine (magazine.du.edu)by Tamara Chapman, 31 January 2022; reproduced with permission Compared with its siblings in the violin family –…
Mixing the Classical and the Popular
The urge to compose music arose after I joined a rock group in my teenage years. Although I was later classically trained, I continued to…
Not Just Another Piano CD
You may be thinking, ‘Oh not another piano recording’! But I believe that all piano albums are different. I have been writing music for over…
Vocal Works That Still Feel Excitingly New
The prolific compositional output of Elisabeth Lutyens includes 129 vocal pieces. The two pieces included on this album were written seventeen years apart: Nativity in…
Elisabeth Lutyens’ Complete Organ Music
Elisabeth Lutyens is not a composer usually associated with the organ. For most of her life she inhabited a musical world which was very much…
Adopt a Composer — Jürgen Thym and Samuel Adler
One of the most rewarding aspects of my activities as a musicologist has been following the life and works of living composers – be they…
Happy Collaborations — Samuel Adler: Music for Chamber Orchestra
Several years ago, through a mutual acquaintance, I met Dongmin Kim, the conductor of the New York Classical Players, and we immediately felt a kinship.…
Three Generations of Tcherepnins
Three Generations explores music by three generations of composers from the Tcherepnin family: Ivan, Alexander and Nikolai. Each of the three wrote a wide range…
My Relationship With The Piano — The Briefest of Histories
I started making up melodies, harmonies, rhythms and colours on the piano before I could read and write. But my real love affair with the…