Tag Archives: Toccata Classics

On Record – The Piatti Quartet – Naresh Sohal: String Quartets (Toccata Classics)

Posted on by
Reply

Piatti Quartet [Michael Trainor, Emily Holland (violins), Miguel Sobrinho (viola),
Jessie Ann Richardson (cello)]

Naresh Sohal
String Quartet no.1 ‘Chiaroscuro II’ (1976)
String Quartet no. 3 (2008)
String Quartet no.4 (2009)
String Quartet no. 5 (2010)

Toccata Classics TOCC0754 [74’33”]
Producer / Engineer Raphaël Mouterde

Recorded 17-19 April 2024 at St Silas’ Church, Kentish Town, London

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics continues its exploration of Naresh Sohal (1939-2018) with this release of four of his string quartets, admirably rendered by the Piatti Quartet to make an illuminating overview of Sohal’s musical language from across the greater part of his composing career.

What’s the music like?

Although he attracted most attention in his lifetime for his often expansive orchestral works, Sohal wrote widely for chamber media and not least string quartet. This medium brought his intended amalgam of Indian and European facets into acute focus though, typical of one who from the start approached the Western Tradition head on, there is nothing anecdotal let alone tokenistic about Sohal’s idiom which, as these quartets amply confirm, is unified stylistically and remains consistent as it heads toward the formal and expressive clarity of his final pieces.

At the time of his first quartet, Chiaroscuro II (its predecessor for brass quintet is on Heritage HTGCD122-3 – review to follow), Sohal was exploring an overtly avant-garde idiom evident through diverse and starkly contrasted techniques given focus by climactic cadenzas on cello then first violin – prior to its final evanescing into silence. Likewise in a single movement of 15 minutes, the Third Quartet could not be more different in aesthetic. Initially heard against an insistent drone from second violin and viola, its ideas emerge as demonstrable variants on what went before such that its animated central section then its inward continuation are made part of an indivisible process. This only makes those over-emphatic closing chords the more jarring, as though the work’s ultimate resolution had to be stated rather than just insinuated.

The remaining works, both with three movements and each lasting around 20 minutes, might be thought even closer to tradition yet, as so often with Sohal, matters are never this concrete. Thus the Fourth Quartet’s initial movement alternates its impetuous and ruminative themes to purposeful effect, then its central Moderato balances eloquence and introspection with a poise as makes this the likely highlight of the album; the final Allegro channelling motifs previously heard towards its satisfying denouement. The Fifth Quartet manipulates form and expression even more deftly, the Allegretto’s incisive yet never unyielding rhythmic verve duly matched by the Adagio’s melodic richness or the final Allegro’s contrapuntal dexterity on the way to a decisive close. Both of these pieces abound in quartet writing as unaffected as it is masterful.

Does it all work?

Indeed it does. Whether conceived as a single span or separate movements, the musical range of these pieces is a constant source of fascination. Even more surprising is that the Fourth and Fifth Quartets are only now receiving their first hearing, but it would be hard to imagine more committed advocacy than from the Piatti Quartet, which has taken this music to its collective heart. Hopefully these pieces will now find greater exposure in recital, as the importance of Sohal’s legacy becomes evident and its relevance to the present more widely acknowledged.

Is it recommended?

Indeed it is. Sound is almost ideal, while Utsyo Charraborty’s overview is complemented by a biographical note from Suddhaseel Sen and Janet Swinney. Hopefully the Second Quartet and the brief Awakening (soprano and string quartet) feature on a further release from this source.

Listen / Buy

You can hear excerpts from the album and explore purchase options at the Toccata Classics website. Click on the names to read more about the Piatti Quartet, and Naresh Sohal

Published post no.2,835 – Monday 23 March 2026

On Record – Daniela Braun, Anna Carewe & Irmela Roelcke – Anatol Vieru: Piano and Chamber Music (Toccata Classics)

Posted on by
Reply

Daniela Braun (violin), Anna Carewe (cello), Irmela Roelcke (piano)

Anatol Vieru
Versete Op.116 (1989)
Piano Sonata no.2 Op.140 (1994)
Piano Trio (1997)

Toccata Classics TOCC0762 [65’09”]
Producer Justus Beyer Engineers Philipp Wisser, Oliver Dannert

Recorded 14-17 June 2024 at Deutschlandfunk Kammermusiksaal, Cologne

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics issues a volume of late chamber works by Romanian composer Anatol Vieru (1926-98), authoritatively realized by three Berlin-based musicians and so confirming him as a major figure during what was a period of intensive creativity for Romanian musical culture.

What’s the music like?

Along with contemporaries Pascal Bentoiu and Stefan Nicolescu, Vieru was a leading light in the post-war era. A successful academic and administrative career went hand in hand with an increasingly forward-looking approach to composition, making for a substantial and diverse output of almost 150 opuses. Only a fraction has been recorded, but performances of various works (including nearly all his seven symphonies) have been released while other pieces can be accessed via YouTube. This album duly collates three chamber works from his last years.

Most substantial is a Piano Trio from the year before his death. As in all three of these works, Vieru eschews tempo indications for metronome markings (something his older contemporary Mieczysław Weinberg favoured in numerous late chamber pieces), while the hybrid nature of its four movements blurs formal divisions so that a motivic continuity audibly extends across the whole entity. Its expressive ambit likewise projects qualities drawn from Classical or even Baroque models decisively into the present, thus offsetting any possibility of this being music with ‘neo-’ connotations. Trenchant and incisive over much of its course, a more yielding and inward aspect increasingly comes to the fore such that the finale concludes in a mood of keen understatement – not so much avoiding a decisive close as rendering one entirely superfluous.

If the other pieces seem less unequivocal in outlook, they are hardly less refractory in content. Indeed, Versete evidently consists of two-dozen ‘‘microstructures’’ as might equally be called vignettes in their brevity and starkness of gesture; any merging toward a cumulative structure effectively determined by the interpreters. Its three movements may suggest the Second Piano Sonata as favouring a more Classical conception, but this is belied by its opening movement’s formal fluidity, its interlude-like successor’s tensile expression, then a finale which pointedly deconstructs its main motifs as to result in the most distilled of resolutions. Many composers adopt a ‘less is more’ strategy in their later music, but Vieru remains unusual in carrying this through to a logical outcome from where any further development cannot easily be imagined.

Does it all work?

Indeed it does. Vieru’s later music derives from an intricate yet never abstruse compositional strategy – succinctly outlined here by Dan Dediu – which ensures formal unity as surely as it promotes expressive variety. If the Piano Trio is the most absorbing work, the remaining two pieces are never less than distinctive and likewise benefit from the unstinting commitment of these players – Irmela Roelchea writing about her involvement with this music in the booklet. Musicians everywhere should hopefully be encouraged to explore such pieces for themselves.

Is it recommended?

Yes it is. The sound has no lack of clarity and definition, if seeming a shade brittle in louder passages, while the booklet also features an overview of the composer by Martin Anderson. Hitherto unrecorded, Vieru’s eight string quartets would seem to be a worthwhile next step.

Listen / Buy

You can hear excerpts from the album and explore purchase options at the Toccata Classics website. Click on the names to read more about the performers – violinist Daniela Braun, cellist Anna Carewe and pianist Irmela Roalcke – and composer Anatol Vieru

Published post no.2,833 – Saturday 21 March 2026

On Record – Tippett Quartet – Noah Max: String Quartets (Toccata Classics)

Posted on by
Reply

Tippett Quartet [John Mills, Jeremy Isaac (violins), Lydia Lowndes-Northcott (viola), Božidar Vukotić (cello)], Michael Morpurgo, narrator (‘The Man Who Planted Trees)

Noah Max
String Quartet no.1 Op.25 ‘The Man Who Planted Trees’ (2020)
String Quartet no.2 Op.37 (2021-22)
String Quartet no.3 Op.41 (2022)
String Quartet no.4 Op. 45 (2022-23)

Toccata Classics TOCC0749 [68’46”]
Producer Andrew Keener Engineer Oscar Torres

Recorded 16 August 2023 at St Silas Church, Kentish Town, London (‘The Man Who Planyed Trees’), 29-31 January 2024 at SJE Arts, Oxford

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics issues a second volume of music by Noah Max – devoted to his four string quartets which emerged at pace during the early years of this decade, and rendered here with conviction by the Tippett Quartet as part of its ongoing commitment to contemporary music.

What’s the music like?

As is emphasized in Martin Anderson’s introductory note, Max is nothing if not versatile for a creative figure still in his late twenties. Other than composition, he has been equally active as a cellist and conductor while also being a poet, film-maker and visual artist. Listeners are most likely to have encountered his music via the chamber opera A Child in Striped Pyjamas, after the novel by John Boyne, which premiered to considerable acclaim in London just over three years back and is an acknowledged influence on what he has composed subsequently.

Not just inspired by Jean Giono’s fable The Man Who Planted Trees, Max’s First Quartet also incorporates this text – eloquently narrated by Michael Morpurgo – across its three movements that chart a course from speculative uncertainty, via rapt inwardness, to dynamic resolution. It may also have three movements, but the Second Quartet is otherwise its antithesis. The initial subtitle, ‘The Ladder of Escape’ (after Joan Miró), affords real insight into its unfolding from fractured and sometimes fractious indecision, via an impulsiveness which ultimately turns in on itself, to a gradual accumulation of sound that yet leaves its overall formal and expressive trajectory in abeyance. One reason, perhaps, why this piece has been placed out of sequence at the close of the programme, as if in anticipation of a response which has yet to be written.

As the composer himself notes, the Third Quartet is designed around the number ‘three’ that imparts instability to almost every aspect; not least a volatile interplay between its harmonic density and a clearly defined chorale as comes into focus in a visceral if (almost inevitably) self-destructive climax – made the more plangent by down-tuning the lowest string on each instrument such that darkness overcomes the ensemble. Likewise cast in a single movement, the Fourth Quartet draws on aspects of Max’s aforementioned opera – but this is only made concrete by the emergence of Jewish liturgical chant during its anguished final stages. Max further draws attention to a conclusion whose demonstrably provisional manner makes the writing of a ‘fifth quartet’ to conclude this putative trilogy a likely and intriguing prospect.

Does it all work?

Pretty much throughout. What becomes evident, above all, is the ease with which Max moves between differing styles and aesthetics so as to result in an approach beholden to none. While this may seem relevant to the work at hand rather than establishing consistency across these quartets as a whole, it should not be taken as failure of intent but rather as an indication that he is still in the formative stages of a composing career which will doubtless throw up more than its fair share of surprises and circuities before one can speak of a definable ‘Max idiom’.

Is it recommended?

Yes it is – not least as these readings have a conviction expected from the always enterprising Tippett Quartet, along with an almost ideal ‘quartet sound’. Those who have Toccata’s earlier anthology of Max’s chamber music (TOCC0638) need not hesitate to acquire this follow-up.

Listen / Buy

You can hear excerpts from the album and explore purchase options at the Toccata Classics website. Click on the names to read more about the Tippett Quartet, Michael Morpurgo and composer Noah Max

Published post no.2,825 – Friday 13 March 2026

On Record – Robert Simpson: Chamber Music, Volume One (Toccata Classics)

Posted on by
Reply

bEva-Maria Hartmann (soprano); cEmma Johnson, dPeter Cigleris (clarinets); dDerek Hannigan (bass clarinet); cRaphael Wallfisch (cello); dWill Duerden, dLevi Andreassen, dDaniil Margulis (double basses); cJohn Lenehan, bCornelis Witthoefft (pianos); aTippett Quartet (John Mills, Jeremy Isaac, violins; Lydia Lowndes-Northcott, viola; Božidar Vukotić, cello)

Robert Simpson
String Quartet in D major (1945)a
Songs – Trocknet nicht!b; The Cherry Tree (both c1942)b
Clarinet Trio (1967)c
Quintet for Clarinet, Bass Clarinet and Three Double Basses (1981)d

Toccata Classics TOCC0701 [70’59’’]
English/German texts & English translation included
Producer / Engineer Michael Ponder

Recorded c3 June 2021 & d20 November 2023 at St George’s, Pinner View, London; a7 February 2023 at Studio TQHQ, Ruislip; b12 August 2024 at Lehmann Studios, Stuttgart

Released in January 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics issues the first of two releases intended to ‘plug the gaps’ in the survey of Robert Simpson’s chamber music recorded by Hyperion in the 1980s and 1990s, featuring mainly younger musicians who demonstrate keen understanding of this composer’s idiom.

What’s the music like?

Although hardly a cohesive collection as such, this album provides an alternative overview across the greater part of Simpson’s output. Nothing here could be considered inessential, while one of these pieces most likely ranks among his finest compositions from any period.

Composed (and duly accepted) as an examination exercise for Simpson’s Batchelor degree at Durham, the String Quartet in D thereafter remained unpublished and unheard until this recording. At just over 20 minutes, the modest dimensions belie its formal deftness and its expressive subtlety – a trenchant initial Allegro followed by an Adagio where Haydnesque wit makes way for Beethovenian profundity, an ingratiating Allegretto closer to intermezzo than scherzo then a final Presto of an exhilaration effortlessly sustained through to its close.

Simpson was always uneasy with the setting of texts (his two published choral works solve this issue in different though equally ingenious way), but these early settings of Goethe and Housman suggest a distinctive and, moreover, convincing approach which could well have become more so had he persevered. Interestingly, both have an almost confessional quality that the composer, still in his early twenties, might have felt better conveyed in instrumental terms. Something that can never be known for sure, but the attraction of these songs remains.

The late 1960s found Simpson writing two major chamber works with clarinet. The Clarinet Quintet has long been regarded among his finest works, but the slightly earlier Clarinet Trio has seldom been heard and is something of a revelation. From its spellbinding introduction, the initial Allegro makes a virtue of abrupt contrast between impulsiveness and remoteness, with the slow movement a fugitive if searching interlude making the final Allegro the more unequivocal as this builds to a powerful apotheosis offset by the otherness of its closing bars.

Simpson afficionados will be familiar with the Quintet for Clarinet, Bass Clarinet and String Trio (Hyperion CDA66626), though maybe not the original incarnation with its three double basses. In fact the musical content sounds, for the most part, better suited to those arresting sonorities – not least the ethereal chorale-like texture of an opening Adagio which, after the mounting energy of a central Allegro, is infused with appreciably greater eloquence on its return and sees the whole work to an ending the more inevitable for its deep-seated repose.

Does it all work?

Pretty much throughout. The present accounts lack little in overall conviction, nor does the sound lack anything in clarity or perspective, while the annotations by Matthew Taylor are as informative as might be expected from one for whom Simpson was a significant mentor.

Is it recommended?

Yes, with the follow-up (Sonata for Two Pianos and Brass Quintet) duly awaited. Incidentally, Taylor recorded the Flute Concerto (with Susan Milan) and Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Bach for the Simpson centenary in 2021 but which is yet to be released. Maybe this year?

Listen / Buy

You can hear excerpts from the album and explore purchase options at the Toccata Classics website

Published post no.2,768 – Thursday 15 January 2026

On Record – Havergal Brian: Complete Choral Songs, Volume One (Toccata Classics)

Posted on by
Reply

aJoyful Company of Singers; bAscolta / Peter Broadbent; cFinchley Children’s Music Group / Grace Rossiter with dChristine Hankin (flute); eImogen Barford (harp); fGavin Roberts, gJohn Evanson (pianos)

Havergal Brian
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (1903)a
Soul Star (1906)a
Come o’er the sea (1907)a
Lullaby of an Infant Chief (1906)a
Ah! County Guy (1919)cg
Violets (1914)b
Fair Pledges of a Fruitful Tree (1919)cg
Grace for a Child (1914)cg
A Song of Willow (1914)bf
And will he not come again? (1914)bf
Ye spotted snakes (1914)bf
Fear no more the heat of the sun (1919)bf
Under the greenwood tree (1919)bf
Full fathom five (1921)bf
Come away, death (1925)af
The Blossom (1914)cg
The Fly (1914)cg
The Little Boy Lost (1914)cg
The Little Boy Found (1914)cg
Piping down the Valleys Wild (1914)cg
The Chimney Sweeper (1914)bf
The Little Black Boy (1914)bf
Four Choral Songs from Prometheus Unbound (1937-44): From Unremembered Agesa; The Patha; There the Voluptuous Nightingalesade; There those Enchanted Eddiesa
Spring – sound the flute (1914)cg
Summer has come, Little Children (1914)cg
Goodbye to Summer (1914)cg
Blow, Blow thou Winter Wind (1925)a

Toccata Classics TOCC0395 [70’59’’]
English texts included
Producer Michael Ponder
Engineer Adaq Khan
Recorded a11 & 12 December 2021, c12 &13 March 2022 at St Jude on the Hill, Hampstead Garden Suburb, London; b26 November 2022 at St Silas, Kentish Town, London

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics releases this first in a two-volume survey of Havergal Brian’s choral songs, a versatile medium to which he contributed several dozen items and through which he first established his reputation, before effectively abandoning the medium a quarter-century later.

What’s the music like?

Although best known for his 32 symphonies, solo songs and choral songs dominate Brian’s earlier output. The latter have not fared well in recorded terms – two (the first and last here) being included on an LP from the Stoke-on-Trent Bedford Singers in 1982 (SAIN TRF239), who recorded a larger selection three years on for the Altarus label which only found limited release on cassette in 1991 (British Music Society Environs ENV016). This Toccata album is hence a timely redress for some of Brian’s most attractive and immediately appealing music.

The choral songs fall into three categories. The first consists of part-songs written mainly for the many choral societies from the Midlands and North in the earlier 20th century – reflected in a textural intricacy and harmonic richness which, between them, provide as stern a test of intonation as expected given their provenance in the competitions held regularly at this time. Shakespeare is especially prominent, as too is Robert Herrick, with the translucency of those settings from the 1900s in contrast to the astringency of those following the First World War.

The second category consists of songs, mostly for upper voices and often in unison, written for school or youth choirs. Many date from 1914 when Brian, having left Stoke for London after the collapse of his first marriage, was in financial straits yet their swift turnaround does not make them of lesser quality. William Blake is the main author, tackled with an emotional acuity and technical poise matched by few subsequent composers, while the poignant setting of Gerald Cumberland likely derives from a children’s operetta abandoned around this time.

The third category consists of four semi-choruses taken from a vast setting of Percy Shelley’s lyrical drama Prometheus Unbound (or at least the first two acts) Brian wrote largely during the Second World War. Its full score is long missing, but the vocal score gives due indication of its underlying ambition and overall technical difficulty not least for the chorus. That said, the three unaccompanied items confirm such demands as integral to the musical conception, while the fourth (track 25) features contributions from flute and harp of diaphanous elegance.

Does it all work?

Indeed it does, both in the technical sophistication of part-songs featuring Joyful Company of Singers or the disarming naivety of unison-songs with Finchley Children’s Music Group; directed with assurance by Peter Broadbent or Grace Rossiter, with Gavin Roberts and John Evanson equally adept in their very different piano writing. Moreover, the track sequencing affords a pleasurable listen on its own terms through emphasizing the consistency of Brian’s response to texts which, in themselves, amount to an ‘unofficial’ anthology of English verse.

Is it recommended?

Very much so, not least given the excellent sound with John Pickard contributing a typically authoritative booklet note. Maybe he might yet be persuaded to oversee a re-orchestration of Prometheus Unbound? In the meantime, the second volume of this survey is keenly awaited.

Listen / Buy

You can hear excerpts from the album and explore purchase options at the Toccata Classics website. Click on the artist names for more on Grace Rossiter, Peter Broadbent, Finchley Children’s Music Group and Joyful Company of Singers. Meanwhile click on the name for the Havergal Brian Society

Published post no.2,762 – Friday 9 January 2026