Massive Savings
on Toccata CDs and Books...
with TWO FREE CDs
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!

How it works

It works very simply: once you pay the annual membership fee of £20 using the form on this page or by sending a sterling cheque (see Contact page), you have instant access to the entire Toccata Classics catalogue, either on CD or as downloads.* You get discounts on both existing and new recordings and all Toccata Press books on music - and as soon as you join, you can claim two Toccata Classics CDs (worth £27) entirely free: simply send an email to info@toccataclassics.com to tell us which two CDs (or which Toccata Press book) you would like.

Toccata Classics CDs are full price in the shops – but as a Discovery Club member you can buy them at less than mid-price, £8.50 post free as opposed to £13.50 or more. Download albums are £7.99 to non-members and £5.99 to members (and individual tracks are reduced by 25%). Toccata Press books come with a similar percentage chopped off.

With your two free Toccata Classics CDs, you've already got your money back as soon as you join, and you continue to make big savings everytime you buy something else through this site. There's no minimum purchase, and nothing will be sent to you if you haven't asked for it. As soon as you've joined the Discovery Club, you can be sure your shopping basket will display your discounted prices.

Once you join, you'll get an e-newsletter every month to let you know what's coming out, with links to the music so you can hear what's on offer. If you like it, you simply buy it online and as soon as the CDs come in from the factory, they'll be sent out to you – you'll have it in your hands well before anyone else hears it. If you prefer to download, you'll likewise have access to the links way ahead of the rest of the world. The newsletter will also bring you recording news – and advance samples where possible. We're also working on a device to bring you free ring-tones from the Toccata Classics catalogue for your mobile phone.

Among the recordings and books you can look forward to...

You'll want to know what is in the pipeline. There's a feast of good music in preparation, almost none of it recorded before:

• the complete piano music by Algernon Ashton, one of the most attractive of the forgotten British Romantics
• transcriptions of Dvořák songs for violin/viola and piano by Josef Suk, the composer’s great-grandson, played by Josef Suk himself and Vladimir Ashkenazy
• the complete string quartets of David Matthews
• the two magnificent piano quintets of Friedrich Gernsheim
• unknown chamber music by George Enescu
• the Symphonie des mystères for organ and Gregorian chant (1994) by Joaquín Nin-Culmell
• the violin and cello sonatas by Leone Sinigaglia, an Italian Dvořák pupil who was a victim of the Nazis
• the complete piano music by Anatol Lyadov
• the piano quintet and string sextet by Ferdinard Thieriot, a friend and contemporary of Brahms
• the complete violin sonatas of Mieczysław Weinberg
• music for piano duo and piano duet by Alkan
• piano music by Eyvind Alnæs, the major Norwegian composer in the generation after Grieg
• the Piano Trios Nos. 1--3 by Salomon Jadassohn, which lie somewhere between Mendelssohn and Brahms
• piano music by Reinhard Oppel, an opponent of Hitler, whose scores lay hidden under the garden shed until the Berlin Wall came down and his family could retrieve them
• the complete music for solo piano and two pianos by Nikolai Peyko, colleague of Shostakovich
• the complete piano music of Antonín Reicha, the maverick Czech-born friend of Beethoven and Haydn
• August Stradal's staggeringly difficult versions for solo piano of the Liszt symphonic poems
• the complete piano music of Anatoly Lyadov
• choral music by Vissarion Shebalin, another friend and colleague of Shostakovich
• the remaining two releases in Stephen Gutman's much-acclaimed first recording of Rameau's keyboard music on a modern concert grand
• complete organ music by the Estonian Peeter Süda, short-lived but a major Romantic composer
• the complete cantatas from Telemann's Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst

and much, much more.

Toccata Press has just published the second volume of Havergal Brian on Music, with his writings on Bartók, Busoni, Hindemith, Mahler, Strauss and other European and American contemporaries; Composing in Words, a collection of William Alwyn's writings on music, is at the printer; and Comrades in Art, the correspondence of Percy Grainger and Ronald Stevenson, along with Stevenson's essays and talks on Grainger, wiull flloow shortly, and will be accompanied by an audio CD of a Grainger recital Ronald Stevenson gave in White Plains, Grainger's NY home, in 1978. Tully Potter's monumental biography of Adolf Busch is already with the typesetter, as is Michael Crump's extensive study of the Martinů symphonies.

Our Philosophy

The Discovery Club is, we think, a novelty in the world of classical music for the simple reason that no label has approached the repertoire on the same basis. The philosophy of Toccata Classics is not to duplicate recordings of works that are already adequately represented in the international catalogue: there's no point in going over the same ground twice. So we can virtually guarantee that Toccata Classics recordings will bring you music that is new to your collection.

Toccata Classics takes a very open view: our aim is to present recordings of outstanding music that is not otherwise available, without regard to the period of its composition or its provenance or, indeed, the fame of each composer – good music is good music, no matter who wrote it, when or where; if it's more or less in the western classical tradition, we want to know about it.

That approach requires a good deal of detective work, of course, and so we are working with a huge network of contacts – musicians, musicologists, librarians, enthusiasts – all around the globe so that the best of the world's forgotten music can make its way to you. We will, as far as possible, ignore today's received opinion in the hope of offering as rich, colourful and rewarding a palette of music as we can.

Toccata Press operates on the same basis: the aim is to publish the books on music that you aren't getting from other publishers – you can be sure that a Toccata Press book will offer material you can't read anywhere else.

Anyone can join

The Toccata Discovery Club is open to everyone: individuals, music schools, libraries, universities, etc.

If you want to see what's coming out before you join the Discovery Club, then simply sign up for the Toccata Classics mailing list by sending an email to info@toccataclassics.com and you'll be advised of new recordings as they appear. As each new release appears on this website, you'll be able to sample it track by track. If you like what you hear, you can buy the CD (or downloads) online at the normal retail price – but if you join the Discovery Club before you make that purchase, you will immediately avail yourself of the members' discount, and enjoy the same discount on every subsequent purchase you make for an entire year from the date of joining. Of course, you always remain in complete control of what you buy.

Tell us what you would like to hear

The Discovery Club will also be guided by your suggestions: we want you to tell us what unrecorded repertoire you think is important and should be considered for recording – making Toccata Classics the first ‘interactive' classical label.

We look forward to welcoming you on board.

 
* There's only one CD in the Toccata Classics catalogue for which we don't have the digital rights: Julius Burger Orchestral Music (TOCC 0001).