The Toccata Classics Blog
“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…
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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…
Obit Nikolai Kapustin
The news of the death of Nikolai Kapustin – on 2 July 2020, at the age of 82 – has sent me scurrying to my…
Elcock: From One Fifth To Another
Steve Elcock has mastered the fast introduction. A device favoured by Berlioz gets a new lease of life: both Elcock’s Third (2005–10) and this new…
Songs of Love, Sorrow and Satire (And Not Forgetting the Baboon!): Recording Hans Gál’s Music for Voices
One of the proudest, happiest and most surreal moments in my singing career to date has been uttering the final notes of a choral concert…
Hans Gál In Conversation
This conversation, first published in the Journal of the British Music Society (Vol. 9, 1987, pp. 33–44), was recorded at Dr Gál’s Edinburgh home in…
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