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…
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…
The third volume of Ronald Stevenson’s piano music (TOCC 0403, released on 1 February) has been probably the most interesting album of his music I’ve…
A December release from Toccata Classics (TOCC0344) presents the first-ever recording of works by the Polish composer Tadeusz Majerski (1888–1963), whose music incorporates elements of…
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…
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…
When the American composer Jack Stamp was appointed International Composer-in-Association to the Grimethorpe Colliery Band in 2019, he conceived a recording project focused on works specifically written for the GCB, including compositions by himself and Liz Lane, the other GCB Composer- in-Association, alongside other pieces which have played a prominent role in the Band’s recent activities. The kaleidoscopic range of styles to be heard here displays the extraordinary virtuosity of one of the world’s best-known brass bands.
Grimethorpe Colliery Band
Jack Stamp, conductor
Ben Palmer, guest conductor
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.…
The urge to compose music arose after I joined a rock group in my teenage years. Although I was later classically trained, I continued to…
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.…
With this second volume of ¡Colombia Viva! – a series capable of infinite expansion, as is indeed intended – Mauricio Arias-Esguerra embarks on another lightning tour of the recent piano music of his native country, displaying the wide variety of styles on offer there, from atmospheric modernism to catchy folk dances, a recurrent element being striking rhythmic vivacity.
Mauricio Arias-Esguerra, piano
Charles Roland Berry, born in Boston, Mass., in 1957, studied in California with Peter Racine Fricker and Paul Creston before supporting himself in a variety of jobs in the music world. As a composer, he believes in writing music that audiences might like to hear and musicians enjoy playing; as a result, all three works here have the open-air, open-hearted, even naïve, quality of much American orchestral music, film scores in particular – the kind of ‘Big Country’ sound that one can hear in Copland, Grofe, Harris, Moross and other painters of the wide outdoors.
Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra (Track 1)
Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine (Tracks 2–6)
Polish Wieniawski Philharmonic Orchestra of Lublin (Tracks 7–10)
Joel Eric Suben, conductor (Track 1)
Theodore Kuchar, conductor (Track 2–10)
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…
If the name of the small town of Lillehammer in Norway rings any bells for you, it is probably as the site of the 1994…
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…
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