The Toccata Classics Blog
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…
Songs of Loneliness
Songs of Loneliness was recorded in the autumn of 2020; the oldest music on the disc dates back to 2016. Here is a selection of…
A Symphony by Mischa Spoliansky
It may come as a surprise to many that Mischa Spoliansky, the composer of the sly and witty cabaret songs that helped to launch the…
Borrowed Time
It is something of a myth that composers tend to die after completing their ninth symphony, based on the relatively few that did so and…
“A Saami Requiem” in Rehearsal
Photographs by Claudius MayWoehl, Woehl-Orgel-Projekte A Saami Requiem A Saami Requiem is an extraordinary meeting-place of musical cultures – western classical, Sámi yoik, Nordic folk-dance, electric rock,…
Pál Hermann Recording Sessions
My friend and colleague Clive Greensmith and I were sitting in the audience of a concert, during which our violinist and pianist colleagues were performing…
Stravinsky and Me
The longest piece on the new Toccata Classics album of my choral works is A Lenten Cantata. It was premiered in 2017 with organ and…
Too Many Symphonies? — Part two: Fridrich Bruk
Having traversed the symphonies of Robert Keeley in Part One of this brief survey (Too Many Symphonies – Part One – posted on 9 March…
!["lebewohl": wanderlied. with: christmas hymn [and] die winter r](https://toccataclassics.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Prince-Albert-Lebewohl-MS-300x224.jpg)
Music for a Prince, Music by a Prince: How Our Recording Came About
As a student I was engaged in postgraduate research at Cambridge on the works of Sir William Walton. At the time, I noticed that one…
Remembering Taryn Fiebig
It is with tremendous sadness that I write today about the passing of the Australian soprano, Taryn Fiebig, on 20 March 2021. Taryn was a…
Too Many Symphonies? – Part One: Rob Keeley
Sometime in the 1950s, when John Barbirolli famously said ‘there are too many symphonies this year, or any year’, he might have been weary after…
Reflections on Recording The Rosner ‘Requiem’
It has given me so much pleasure to read the wonderful reviews of the Rosner Requiem recording, where discerning critics have enthusiastically endorsed the great…
Recording Francis George Scott’s Piano Music
Two years after I began to record it, the first-ever album of Francis George Scott’s piano music is now available. The programme as it appears…
Reflections on the Life and Work of Friedrich Gernsheim – With Some Help from the Young People of Worms
Ever since, some years ago, I heard the State Philharmonic Orchestra of Rhineland-Palatinate performing a symphony by Friedrich Gernsheim (1839–1916), I have been seeking to…
Some Thoughts on Marcel Mihalovici’s Left-Hand ‘Passacaille’
On 2 October Toccata Classics releases the first-ever album of the piano music of the Romanian-born, Paris-based Marcel Mihalovici (1898–1985), in performances by the Berlin-based…
Prokofiev’s Violin Partnerships
At the beginning of October Toccata Classics will release a new album, by the violinist Yuri Kalnits and pianist Yulia Chaplina, of music by Prokofiev…