The Toccata Classics Blog
Introducing the Waldegrave Ensemble
The Waldegrave Ensemble established itself in 2009 as a flexible ensemble of wind, strings, piano, harp and brass, with a wind quintet at its core.…
All the Keys in Kent
One of the Toccata Classics releases later this summer will be a recording of a sequence of piano preludes commissioned from me in 2014 by…
Robert Saxton’s Piano Music: A Creative Collaboration
Clare Hammond introduces her album of Robert Saxton’s piano music, in preparation for release in March 2018 In August I travelled to SJE Arts in…
Rodney Newton’s Spanish Diary
UPDATE: ALBUM AVAILABLE NOW! Day 1, Sunday, 17 September 2017 This afternoon my old friend Martin Anderson and I set out for Málaga to record…
Zuzana Růžičková, Doyenne of the Harpsichord – And Mrs Viktor Kalabis
The death of Zuzana Růžičková – peacefully, in her sleep, in the early afternoon on 27 September 2017 – brings to an end one of…
Recording my Tone Poems in Liepāja
The first thing I noticed was the trees. Once we were out of Riga airport, they soon crowded up to the edge of the road;…
Steve Elcock Orchestral Music IndieGoGo
Help to make the first recording of Steve Elcock’s Orchestral Music a public release by funding the IndieGoGo campaign: After writing music for over 25…
‘Long Memories’: The Diary of an Unfolding Project for Toccata Press – First Stop: Lithuania
‘Long Memories’ – the original idea for a book of interviews with senior composers came as the result of meeting and working with two very…
Robert Crowe Guest Blog on The Opera Stage
Explore Toccata artist Robert Crowe has penned a guest-blog for the site, The Opera Stage. Read the excerpt below, and continue reading on TheOperaStage.com and…
An Estonian Excursion for the Heino Eller Award
Toccata Classics has now released five albums of the piano music of the Estonian composer Heino Eller – enough for Toccata founder Martin Anderson to…
A Tribute To Pascal Bentoiu
This Friday, 7 April, the Romanian Cultural Institute in London plays host to the first of two events paying homage to Pascal Bentoiu, one of…
David Gorton’s “Variations on John Dowland” Reviewed on BBC Radio 3
Order Now Andrew McGregor and Kirsten Gibson talking on Record Review, BBC Radio 3, broadcast Saturday 18 March 2017: Kirsten Gibson reviews a collection of…
John Gardner, Symphonist
This interview was published in Fanfare, Vol. 24, No. 1 (September/October 2000) to mark the release of an ASV CD of John Gardner’s orchestral music.…
Algernon Ashton and Stephen Dodgson: A Brief Introduction to Two English Composers
A brief introduction to the music of Algernon Ashton and a discussion with Jane Clark Dodgson about her late husband, Stephen Dodgson, in St Margaret…
‘We Should Know Who We Are’: Veljo Tormis in Conversation
Learn More I am much saddened by the news of the death of Veljo Tormis on Saturday, 21 January. Tormis was as significant a figure…
Unlocking the Secrets of Sacred Music in Late-Eighteenth-Century Rome: Detective Work among Dusty Manuscripts
For better or worse, I have always been highly (some would say provocatively) inquisitive, and not always content to accept, without question, received narratives of…