CDs featuring Sir Donald Francis TOVEY

TOCC0033   details

Sir Donald Tovey: Symphony in D, The Bride of Dionysus: Prelude

The Bride of Dionysus: Prelude
Symphony in D, Op. 32

Malmö Opera Orchestra, Sweden, orchestra
George Vass, conductor

Donald Francis Tovey (1875–1940) has long been known as one of the finest writers on music in English – but he saw himself primarily as a composer. His powerful and ambitious Symphony, written in 1913, has its stylistic roots in Brahms and Bruckner, and more distantly in Schumann, but Tovey was also open to contemporary developments: the harmonic procedures occasionally invoke Reger, the adventurous use of orchestral colour suggests Mahler and Nielsen and the scale – it is almost an hour in length – casts the work as a mighty cousin to Elgar’s two symphonies, finished not long before. This is its first recording since Tovey himself conducted a BBC broadcast performance in 1937. The disc opens with the first recording of the gentle, noble Prelude to Tovey’s only opera, The Bride of Dionysus, begun in 1907 and completed in 1918.

TOCC0038   details

Sir Donald Tovey: Cello Concerto, Air for strings, Elegiac Variations

Cello Concerto, Op. 40
Air for strings
Elegiac Variations, Op. 25, for cello and piano

Alice Neary, cello
Ulster Orchestra, orchestra
George Vass, conductor
Gretel Dowdeswell, piano

Donald Tovey (1875–1940) has long been known as one of the finest writers on music in English – but he saw himself primarily as a composer. His Cello Concerto – written for his friend Pablo Casals in 1932-33 – may be the longest in history; indeed, as he worked on the score he wrote to a friend that the first movement would be a ‘record-breaker’ and ‘much the juiciest’ music he had yet produced. The work sits mid-way between Brahms and Elgar, but has a lyrical and dignified voice that is uniquely Tovey’s. The contrasting tone of the dark, heroic Elegiac Variations was inspired by the death of Robert Hausmann, cellist of the Joachim Quartet and a cherished chamber-music partner of Tovey’s. And the charming Air for strings reveals his delight in a well-turned Classical theme.

TOCC0068   details

Donald Francis Tovey: Chamber Music, Volume One

Piano Trio in B minor, Op. 1
Piano Trio in C minor, Op. 8

London Piano Trio, piano trio
Robert Atcheson, violin
Bozidar Vukotic, cello
Olga Dudnik, piano

Donald Francis Tovey (1875–1940) has long been known as one of the finest writers on music in English – but he saw himself primarily as a composer. His Symphony, Op. 32, and Cello Concerto, Op. 40, already released in this Toccata Classics survey of Tovey’s music, alerted modern listeners to a major voice in British orchestral music. These two trios, lyrical and intense, from the start of Tovey’s career, present him in his first love: chamber music.