Archive for Guest Blog
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…
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…
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…
Remembering Cedric Thorpe Davie
Cedric Thorpe Davie was born into a musical family in London in 1913. His father, Thorpe Davie, was a remarkable Scot who had a successful…
Recording “An Outstretched Hand” and Other Chamber Works
At half past four on a Friday morning in May 2018 I set out from my home in south-eastern France to go to England. The…
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 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…
Discovering Robert Fürstenthal and his ‘Lost Lieder’
It was while I was working as music curator at the Jewish Museum in Vienna that someone told me about Robert Fürstenthal. It must have…
The ‘Yodit’ Pieces Begin to Take on a Life of Their Own — A Report from Orlando Jacinto García
Orlando García is one of the composers who has contributed to Martin Anderson’s ‘Music For My Love’ project of pieces in memory of his partner.…
Recording David Hackbridge Johnson in Liverpool
I’m just back from a thrilling two days in Liverpool conducting the first-ever recording of the music of David Hackbridge Johnson. Indeed, these were not…
The Re-Emergence of Leo Zeitlin
The story of Leo Zeitlin and his music’s re-emergence is so remarkable that it has already been duly reported in several online and printed articles.…
Exploring Stephen Dodgson’s Chamber Music
It is very exciting for me, as Stephen Dodgson’s widow, to report that Toccata Classics will be releasing a series of recordings of his chamber…
Hans Gál’s Chamber Music for Clarinet : A Joyful and Important Discovery
Read More For us in the Ensemble Burletta, a chamber-music group exploring chamber music for clarinet in various combinations, the music of Hans Gál is…
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,…
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…