Echoes of Autumn and Light: New Chamber Music from Luxembourg

These five pieces – all written by Luxembourgeois composers within the past decade – draw on the flexible forces of Kammerata Luxembourg to generate a kaleidoscopic range of colours and textures. Though the music is unapologetically modernist in style, it is presented in instrumental combinations remarkable for their delicacy and gentle contours – in the aural equivalent of a walk through autumn woods.

Kammerata Luxembourg
Mariette Lentz, soprano (Track 1)
Markus Brönnimann, flute, alto flute, piccolo (Tracks 1, 3–9, 11–16)
Sébastien Duguet, clarinet, bass clarinet (Tracks 3–16)
Max Mausen, clarinet, bass clarinet (Tracks 1-2)
Leo Halsdorf, horn (Track 1)
Sandrine Cantoreggi, violin (Tracks 1, 10)
Haoxing Liang, violin (Tracks 3 – 9, 11 – 16)
Sophie Urhausen, viola (Track 1)
Nora Braun, cello (Tracks 1, 10)
Ilia Laporev, cello (Tracks 2 – 9, 11 – 16)
Jeannot Sanavia, double bass (Track 1)
Chanel Perdichizzi, harp (Track 2)
Victor Kraus, percussion (Track 10)
Béatrice Rauchs, piano (Tracks 1, 3–16)
Camille Kerger, conductor (Tracks 1, 11–16)

Music for a Prince, Music by a Prince: Fourteen Pieces written for H. R. H. Prince Charles, Fourteen Songs written by H. R. H. Prince Albert

This unusual recording brings princely offerings of two different kinds. In 1970 Prince Charles – who had studied cello and trumpet – was presented with a leather-bound volume containing pieces written for his entertainment by the composers on the council of the Performing Right Society. These fourteen bonnes bouches are complemented by fourteen German Lieder written by Prince Charles’ great-great-great-grandfather, Prince Albert, the Prince Consort, whose style owed something to that of his good friend, Felix Mendelssohn.

Jeremy Huw Williams, baritone (Tracks 15, 18–31)
Theodore Buchholz, cello (Tracks 1, 2, 4, 6-9, 11-14, 17)
Edward Reid, trumpet (Tracks 3, 4, 5, 8, 10, 11, 14)
Jason Carder, trumpet (Track 16)
Paula Fan, piano (Tracks 1-7, 10, 12, 14-31)

¡Colombia Viva!: Piano Music by Mauricio Arias-Esguerra, Blas Emilio Atehortúa, Ian Frederick, Jaime León, Gustavo Parra, Germán Darío Pérez

In this album Mauricio Arias-Esguerra offers a kaleidoscopic view of recent Colombian piano music, highlighting its striking stylistic variety. Germán Darío Pérez sees a traditional dance through a jazzy lens, and Blas Emilio Atehortúa takes a post-serial approach in his Preludio, Variaciones y Presto Alucinante. The influence of progressive rock music can be heard in Gustavo Parra’s Pavec Lingus, as can Jaime León’s love of US American music in his Made in U.S.A. preludes; and there is techno and angst in Ian Frederick’s Suite Catrina. Arias-Esguerra’s own contributions are highly contrasted, with lyricism in his Arizona Mirage and rhythmic drive in his Toccata Bachkovsky.

Mauricio Arias-Esguerra, piano

Four Hands for France: Music for Piano Duet

Playing four-hands piano was both vital in the dissemination of music in the nineteenth century and also a popular domestic activity. The French composers recorded here span the Romantic century, from the salon charm of Chaminade and Massenet and the virtuosity of Alkan’s wild dance to the innocence of the family music-room in pieces by Chausson, Godard and Ropartz. The original 1853 Parisian Erard piano on which this recording was made combines warmth with bell-like clarity due to its straight stringing, allowing it to produce a surprising variety of appealing, expressive textures.

Stephanie McCallum (primo) and Erin Helyard (secondo)
Piano Erard 1853

First Ladies: Three Romantic Violin Sonatas

One could hardly intuit from these fresh and flowing violin sonatas the obstacles their female composers had to face – family opposition for Mel Bonis in France and Ethel Smyth in England, institutional conservatism for Elfrida Andrée in Sweden. It has taken a century and more for that initial prejudice to fall away, and they are now beginning to attract a fair hearing for their music. What ultimately matters, of course, is not whether composers are male or female but whether they write good music, and these three sonatas – melodically expansive, rhythmically vivacious, harmonically warm – point to the musical riches that further exploration of their creators’ output will uncover.

Annette-Barbara Vogel, violin
Durval Cesetti, piano

Three Centuries of Russian Viola Sonatas

The Russian viola sonata is a rare bird, not least because the instrument itself was frowned upon by the Soviet authorities; as a result Russian music for the viola has a rather patchy history. It begins in earnest in 1931, when the 1825 Sonata by Mikhail Glinka, ‘the father of Russian music’, was reconstructed from his sketches by Vadim Borisovsky, ‘the father of the Russian viola’. Thereafter, musicians and composers worked together to expand the repertoire. The relationship between the composer Revol Bunin and the violist Rudolf Barshai resulted in a sonata of 1955 which deserves wider currency. Although half a century apart, the Shebalin and Sokolov sonatas have something unusual in common: both were created as part of a triptych, alongside sonatas for violin and cello. All four composers knew how to make the viola sing – though this lyricism is often animated by moments of drama and excitement.

Basil Vendryes, viola
William David, piano

Three Generations

This album explores music by three father-and-son generations of the Tcherepnin family of composers: Nikolai, Alexander and Ivan. Although each wrote a wide range of scores, from solo pieces to operas and ballets, this recording focuses on their chamber music, presenting pieces spanning 95 years. Nikolai’s works for violin and piano reveal a late-Romantic, post-Tchaikovskian sensibility, whereas those of Alexander have a more modern, twentieth-century touch, closer to the style of his friend Sergei Prokofiev (a student of Nikolai Tcherepnin). Ivan is represented by two works — early and late – for flute, clarinet and piano, which have an improvisatory and playful quality.

Quan Yuan, violin (Tracks 1–9)
Sue-Ellen Hershman-Tcherepnin, flute (Tracks 10, 11)
Ian Greitzer, clarinet (Track 11)
David Witten, piano (Tracks 1–10)
Donald Berman, piano (Track 11)

A Saami Requiem

A Saami Requiem is an extraordinary meeting-place of musical cultures – western classical, Sámi yoik, Nordic folk-dance, electric rock, blues, improv and more. It takes the form of a journey to Saajva, the Kingdom of Death in Sámi religious practice. With it the Swedish organist Gunnar Idenstam and Sámi artist Ola Stinnerbom provide a parallel to the Christian Requiem, with Ola Stinnerbom as Noite, the shaman who acts as guide to the Kingdom of Death – and back to this life, celebrated in the uplifting closing hymn. Some of the percussion sounds are sampled from traditional Sámi drums made by Ola Stinnerbom after ancient models; the electric guitars provide a link to rock groups like Deep Purple and King Crimson; and Gunnar Idenstam’s unmistakable style marries the French organ tradition with the alluring world of Swedish folk-music.

Ola Stinnerbom, yoik (Tracks 2–14)
Gunnar Idenstam, organ (Tracks 1–7, 9–14)
Henrietta Wallberg, vocalist (Tracks 7, 8, 10)
Erik Weissglas, guitars (Tracks 3–6, 9, 12–14)
Rafael Sida Huizar, percussion (Tracks 3–6, 8, 10–14)

Catalan Concertinos and Fantasias

Most of the works by the two Catalan composers heard here – Joan Manén (1883–1971) and Marc Migó (b. 1993) – use material from their folk tradition, making the music fresh, immediate and direct, rather in the manner of Manuel de Falla. But there is also a loose connection with Vienna: Manén’s Violin ‘Concertino’ – an unusually modest label for a full-scale concerto – is something of a cousin to the Korngold Concerto; and Migó’s poignant Epitafi a Hans Rott was written in memory of a short-lived Austrian composer who was a close friend of Gustav Mahler.

Kalina Macuta, violin (Tracks 6 – 8)
Sergi Pacheco, piano (Tracks 9, 10)
Daniel Blanch, piano (Track 12)
National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine
Volodymyr Sirenko, conductor

Andrzej Panufnik: Composing Myself

Preface by Simon Callow
Extent: 478 pages
20 colour & 80 b/w illustrations
Hardback

Toivo Kuula: Complete Solo Songs, Volume One

Toivo Kuula (1883–1918) is one of the many composers who died at a tragically young age – 35 in his case, the result of an alcohol-fuelled pub brawl. The striking quality of the music he wrote during his short life points to the immensity of the loss not only to Finnish culture but to music more generally – as this first album of two, presenting his entire output of songs for solo voice and piano, makes abundantly clear. The range of moods captured here is striking, from cheery folksongs to dark existentialist contemplations of the meaning of life and death. The most passionate of them generate an operatic intensity in their short span, in a style that balances directness of expression and rich late-Romantic harmonies.

Jenni Lättilä, soprano
Kirill Kozlovski, piano

The Estonian Cello

The strength and richness of Estonian classical music has its origins in two contrasting schools – the international outlook taught by Heino Eller in Tartu and the craftsmanship fostered by Artur Kapp in Tallinn. This album presents Eller’s complete output for cello and piano in its first recording, complemented by works by two of his more important students, Eduard Oja and Eduard Tubin. Villem Reimann and Herman Känd, both students of Kapp, had very different careers, Reimann an established professor in Soviet Estonia, and Känd dying unknown in American exile at only 46. This is the first recording of any of his music in over half a century.

Valle-Rasmus Roots, cello
Sten Lassmann, piano

The Balkan Piano, Volume One

The composing traditions of the ten Balkan countries are as good as unknown in the rest of the world. In this revelatory piano recital, the Albanian pianist Amir Xhakoviq presents a glittering array of keyboard jewels from his own country and its neighbours, ranging from wild and energetic toccatas to timeless evocations of bells and other ancient traditions, with a surprisingly wide range of references, from folk-music to Scarlatti and jazz. As ‘Volume One’ indicates, this album is intended as the first of a series that will continue to explore the unfamiliar music of the Balkans.

Amir Xhakoviq, piano

Havergal Brian on Music: Volume Two: European and American Music in his Time

Edited by Malcolm MacDonald
Extent: 458 pages
Composition: Demy octavo ~ Index

Noah Max: Songs of Loneliness: Solos, Duos and Trios

Noah Max – born into a musical family in London in 1998 – has already carved out an impressive career as a composer and conductor; he is also an accomplished painter and a poet. For someone so young, the surprise of this debut album is the sense of loss unifying these pieces. The feeling of innocence forgone is characteristic of the music of many English composers in the first half of the twentieth century, Elgar, Finzi, Howells and Vaughan Williams among them. Max’s music is clearly of its own time, but it shares the elegiac lyricism of those earlier masters.

Raymond Brien, clarinet (track 5)
Philip Haworth, oboe (tracks 16-18)
Zoë Solomon, piano (tracks 1-4, 6-8)
Members of the Brompton Quartet (tracks 9-14)
Maja Horvat, violin
Kinga Wojdalska, viola
Wallis Power, cello
The Barbican Piano Trio (track 19)
Sophie Lockett, violin (track 19)
Robert Max, cello (tracks 1-4)
James Kirby, piano (track 15)

Join the Discovery Club!

Massive Savings on Toccata CDs, Downloads and Books PLUS A £30 VOUCHER to welcome you on board!

Membership of the Discovery Club brings you huge savings on all Toccata Classics recordings and all Toccata Press music books – with the added advantage that you can enjoy the new releases and publications well before they reach the rest of the world. And you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that you are helping to rewrite musical history and right some historical wrongs!