The Toccata Classics Blog
Svetik, My Hair and I
My contribution to Svetik – the opening section, ‘Three Sisters’ – deals with Sviatoslav Richter’s relationship to his mother and her sister (Dagmar von Reincke,…
Coming in from the Unknown
English composer Steve Elcock describes his emergence from total obscurity At the age of seventeen, I sat the entrance examination to go to Oxford to…
Where are the Women Composers?
Women Composers Bundle Time for a little controversy on this blog – but that’s not my aim, which is to try to understand why, when…
Leif Solberg Dies at 101
The death of the Norwegian composer, organist and choirmaster Leif Solberg – in Lillehammer, during the evening of 25 January – has just been announced.…
Sviatoslav Richter: The Pianist and the Person
In the autumn of 1959 I was beginning my final year at Oxford. A friend called David Tempest, like me a piano nut, asked me…
Jaromír Weinberger Re-Discovered
Today (well, I guess it depends on when you read this) – 8 January 2016 – marks the 120th anniversary of the birth of the…
Discovering Henry Cotter Nixon
Given my long involvement with The Havergal Brian Society – I was its Secretary and Newsletter editor from 1976 to 1992 and Chairman from 1994…
Podcast: Gabriel Fauré: Songs for Bass Voice and Piano
Martin Anderson, Mary Dibbern, Roy Howat and Jared Schwartz discuss new Toccata release Gabriel Fauré: Songs for Bass Voice and Piano: http://feed.toccataclassics.com/media/2015-08-27_fauresongsandvoicespodcast.mp3 Click to listen…
Gramophone Features Toccata Classics in September 2015 Issue!
Gramophone Magazine highlights a handful of recent Toccata Classics releases in the Gramophone Collector feature: William Hurlstone: Complete Piano Music “…while I usually run a…
Discovering The Music of Leopold Damrosch
One of my favorite things to do is go into libraries, find my way to the orchestral scores and lose myself in there for untold…
Einar Englund, Symphonist and Drinking Companion
Today, 17 June, would have been the 99th birthday of the Finnish composer, Einar Englund, who, with his second wife, Maynie, was a friend of…
Rebels without a cause?
Is there really music after midnight? At Classical:NEXT in Rotterdam at the end of May I attended a panel discussion entitled ‘Music after Midnight’. I…
More Questions Raised than Answered
I approached Classical:NEXT 2015 – the trade fair for classical music – at De Doelen, Rotterdam, at the end of May, with an open mind…
Gary Brain Remembered
It has not been a good week. On Friday Yodit, my beloved fiancée, partner of the past seven years and mother of our five-year-old Alex,…
John McCabe in his Own Words
John’s death on 13 February was not unexpected – indeed, he had given his brain tumour a good fight and long outlived his doctors’ prognoses.…
Ronald Stevenson: all-too-brief encounters, and an astounding legacy.
I met Ronald only once. I simply came to his music too late in his life — which came to a peaceful end on 28…