Latest Releases

Havergal Brian: Orchestral Music, Volume Two

The English composer Havergal Brian (1876–1972) is renowned for his 32 symphonies, 21 of them – written after his 80th birthday – constituting one of the most remarkable Indian summers in the history of music. It is less well known that Brian also composed five operas; since none of them has yet been staged, this CD reveals for the first time some of the remarkably inventive and powerful orchestral pieces hidden within those scores.

Release date: 5 December 2011.

Heino Eller: Complete Piano Music, Volume One

The Estonian Heino Eller (1887–1970) is probably best known as the teacher of Arvo Pärt – but he was a prolific and original composer in his own right. His substantial output for piano – this series will contain seven CDs – was written over a period of six decades and thus reflects a range of styles. Taking the lyricism of Chopin and Grieg as its starting point, it combines the influence of Estonian folksong, Scriabin’s troubled harmonies, the epic northern colouring of Sibelius and, at times, Prokofiev’s motoric energy into an attractively individual manner.

Release date: 3 October 2011.

Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst: Complete Music for Violin and Piano, Volume Two

Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst (1812–65) was one of the leading musicians of his day, a friend of Berlioz, Chopin, Liszt and Mendelssohn, and for Joseph Joachim ‘the greatest violinist I ever heard’. But the popular encore pieces by which Ernst is remembered today represent only a fraction of his output. This second CD – in a series of six presenting his complete violin works for the first time – combines brilliant display and expressive melody: the Otello Fantasy and Rossini Variations show Ernst developing Paganini’s inheritance, and the Boléro, Two Romances and Pensées fugitives show why he was such a favourite in Parisian salons.

Release date: 24 October 2011.

Joaquín Nin-Culmell: Symphonie des Mystères

Joaquín Nin-Culmell (1908-2004) was a student of Dukas and Falla and his early music reflects his Spanish background. The Symphonie des Mystères (1992-4) for alternating Gregorian chant and organ, is a product of the religious devotion of his old age, the chant sections setting in bold relief the austerely passionate organ commentaries, which have an affinity with Messiaen, as Nin-Culmell’s music traces a dramatic arch charting the birth, crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.

Release date: 24 October 2011.

Phillip Ramey: Piano Music, Volume Three: 1960-2010

The piano music of the American composer Phillip Ramey (b. 1939) is rooted in the motoric athleticism of Prokofiev and Bartók, seasoned with sober lyricism, spicy modernist dissonance and a fresh approach to the grand Romantic gesture. Covering a span of half a century, this third Toccata Classics album includes the vivacious early Suite, the sparkling Toccata Giocosa, the atmospheric Slavic Rhapsody, the parodistic Burlesque-Paraphrase on a Theme of Stephen Foster and the exotic Djebel Bani (A Saharan Meditation), concluding with the virtuosic, highly dramatic Sixth Sonata.

Release date: 5 September 2011.

Vissarion Shebalin: Complete A Cappella Choral Cycles

The Siberian-born Vissarion Shebalin (1902–63) is best known for his instrumental music, which includes five symphonies and nine string quartets, some of which have been heard on CD, but this is the first recording of the eight delightful, and very Russian, choral cycles he wrote from 1949. Shebalin had to endure much hardship: along with Shostakovich, a close friend and colleague, he was one of the composers condemned in the infamous 1948 Party congress in Moscow; and in later life he fought to overcome a series of crippling strokes. These tribulations he faced with understated but unshakable optimism, as these touching choruses reveal.

Release date: 5 September 2011.

Shostakovich: Complete Music for Piano Duo and Duet, Volume One

Much of Shostakovich’s orchestral music was first heard in versions he prepared for piano four hands or two pianos – but most of these transcriptions have languished unheard since those early performances. This series uncovers all the transcriptions prepared by Shostakovich himself, coupling them with all his original music for piano duo and duet. It begins with the first recording of his four-hand version of the Ninth Symphony.

Release date: 5 September 2011.

Sergei Vasilenko: Complete Music for Viola and Piano

The Russian composer Sergei Vasilenko (1872–1956) was influenced by the nineteenth-century nationalist school, by his teacher Taneyev and by Scriabin, adding an interest in Symbolism and hints of early modernism. The discovery of the seven viola compositions on this CD – most of them unknown before now – not only expands the repertoire of the instrument; it also points to the courage of a composer who spent his life treading the tight-rope between his own musical interests and the demands of Soviet ‘socialist realism’.

Release date: 5 September 2011.

Dmitry Shostakovich: Songs for the Front

During the Siege of Leningrad, which lasted from 1941 to 1944, Shostakovich was famously photographed in a fireman’s outfit on the burning rooftops. But he also made a musical contribution to the defence of the city, arranging a series of songs – operatic arias, classical numbers and popular Soviet hits – for voices, violin and cello. The musicians then climbed into the back of a truck and were driven to the front, where they performed to the soldiers. The cheeky, folky – and defiantly Russian – insouciance of many of the songs, recorded here for the first time, must have brought a ray of hope and humour to the cold and hungry troops.

Release date: 5 December 2011.

John McCabe: Farewell Recital

On 29 August 2010, at the Presteigne Festival on the Welsh borders, John McCabe gave his last public piano recital, bringing to an end a career as solo pianist that had lasted half a century. McCabe – born in Liverpool in 1939 and a composer-pianist in the tradition of Beethoven and Rachmaninov – has always championed the music of his contemporaries alongside his own and that of the masters of the past, and this farewell recital included two works by friends and colleagues and his own grandiose Tenebrae.

Release date: 19 September 2011.