Welcome to Toccata Classics

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Discovery Club

Welcome to Toccata Classics, the label dedicated to producing recordings of the vast amount of top-notch classical music that the concert halls and major record companies are ignoring. We bring you revelations from the staggering quantity of good music that doesn't otherwise get heard, from obscure Baroque cantatas via overlooked Romantic symphonies to composers once hidden behind the Iron Curtain.

Josef Suk, 1929–2011

With the death of Josef Suk on 7 July the world lost one of its greatest musicians, and Toccata Classics lost a much-loved patron. The Toccata Classics CD of his Dvořák song-transcriptions, made with one of our other patrons, Vladimir Ashkenazy, was his last recording and we are enormously proud to have brought it to the world. But Josef Suk’s legacy continues: when Toccata Press begins publishing music later this year, one of the first publications will be his transcription of the Dvořák Love Songs, Op. 83. The rest of the transcriptions will be published in due course.

Join the Toccata Discovery Club to explore the hidden gems of music – and save money as you do so!

The Toccata Discovery Club brings you big discounts on all the recordings in the Toccata Classics catalogue, both new and earlier releases — in your choice of CDs or downloads, as you prefer — and all the books in the Toccata Press catalogue. The £20 annual subscription to the Discovery Club brings you a stonking £5.00 off CDs, £2.00 off album downloads and 25% off books — all delivered post-free anywhere in the world. Not only that: as soon as you join, you can choose two CDs from the Toccata Classics catalogue or a Toccata Press book entirely free (stocks permitting). There's no minimum purchase, and you're not sent anything you haven't asked for. Click here or on the Discovery Club tab for more details and to join.

The Summer Releases from Toccata Classics

We have two waves of releases this summer. In the first you’ll find the complete Bach transcriptions for organ by Sigfrid Karg-Elert, the complete string quartets by Mario Lavista, Mexico’s leading contemporary composer, the first volume of piano music by the forgotten Reinhard Oppel (1878–1941), which lies somewhere between Dvořák and Reger, and piano music by Nikolai Tcherepnin, founder of a major dynasty of Russian composers.

Shostakovich: Music for Piano Duo/Duet, Volume 1

In the second, in late summer, there are three Russians, the third instalment of a Toccata Classics series and what may prove a landmark recording: the unknown a cappella choral suites by Vissarion Shebalin and the first volume in the complete Shostakovich for piano duo and duet, in this instance with the first recording of the four-hand version of the Ninth Symphony, the complete music for viola and piano by Sergei Vasilenko, Volume Three of the Toccata Classics survey of the piano music of the American composer Phillip Ramey, and John McCabe’s last public piano recital, given last year at the Presteigne Festival – and released on CD at this year’s.

The Spring Releases from Toccata Classics

Beethoven: Arrangements for Viola and Piano

Ernst: Music for Violin and Piano, Volume 1

Toccata Classics released some wonderful recordings this spring. In the first batch there’s the complete music for piano duo and duet by Alkan, three Beethoven transcriptions for viola (with a few seconds of a lost viola sonata that Beethoven began!), the first in a major series of the complete Ernst for violin and piano with Sherban Lupu and Ian Hobson, and some irresistibly catchy music for brass and organ by the much-loved British composer John Gardner – two of them ‘Editor’s Choices’ in the April Gramophone .

Telemann: Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst, Volume 3

The next set of releases brought music for solo piano by Grieg’s successor Eyvind Alnæs; the first of two CDs of orchestral music by that magnificent maverick among British composers, Havergal Brian; violin and cello sonatas by Leone Sinigaglia, composer, mountaineer, Dvořák student, friend of Brahms and victim of the Nazis; and the third instalment in the pioneering Bergen Barokk cycle of the cantatas in Telemann’s Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst.

Among other releases you can look forward to soon…

Two Toccata Classics recordings ‘Editor’s Choice’ in April Gramophone

In a rare accolade for any independent CD label, not one but two Toccata Classics recordings receive the coveted award of ‘Editor’s Choice’ in the April issue of Gramophone magazine: Goldstone and Clemmow’s recording of the complete Alkan works for piano duo and duet and Volume One of the complete Ernst for violin and piano by Sherban Lupu and Ian Hobson. Click on the covers to listen to each CD.

The Toccata Classics Bestseller!

Toccata Classics is proud to present two of the world’s most important musicians, Josef Suk and Vladimir Ashkenazy (both of them patrons of the label) in a landmark recording: 30 Dvořák songs in transcriptions for violin/viola by Josef Suk himself, the composer’s great-grandson – an hour of gorgeous ‘new’ music by one of the world’s major musical figures.

‘a real gem. Suk and Ashkenazy deliver unspeakably lovely performances. This is a recording to return to again and again’

James Jolly, Gramophone – Editor’s Choice

What is Toccata Classics?

Toccata Classics is a label dedicated to producing recordings of the huge amount of top-notch classical music that the concert halls and major record companies are ignoring. We make a point of seeking out interesting composers from less familiar musical cultures and from all periods, in the Nordic and Baltic countries, in central and eastern Europe, Russia and further afield.

Toccata Classics was launched in 2005 to bring you these forgotten gems. We now have over 50 CDs in the catalogue with, in the pipeline, recordings of music by Alkan, Alnæs, Ashton, Bach, Beethoven, Brian, Enescu, Lavista, Lyadov, Lyatoshynsky, David Matthews, Nin-Culmell, Oppel, Peyko, Rameau, Ramey, Reicha, Röntgen, Shebalin, Shostakovich, Sinigaglia, Süda, Boris Tchaikovsky, Alexander and Nikolai Tcherepnin, Telemann, Vassilenko, Weinberg, Woyrsch and many more.

The journey on which Toccata Classics is launched might never end, but it will be an exciting voyage of discovery nonetheless. And we hope that you will want to come on board for the ride. That's where the Toccata Discovery Club comes in. In the first place this music is being discovered for people like you (and then, of course, for audiences further afield, we hope). When you join the Discovery Club, you get instant access to everything we do at a considerable discount, and you'll be able to buy each new CD — at a discount, of course — long before it comes into the shops. We want you to share our sense of excitement as each new recording is made and our anticipation as it nears release.

It works both ways, too. We want Toccata Classics to be an interactive label. You might know of some composer whose work is not yet on CD but deserves an audience. So tell us! We are keen to have your suggestions and we need your support.

Martin Anderson
Toccata Classics

The Toccata Classics Catalogue

(Most recent CDs at the top)