Tag Archives: Toccata Classics

On Record – Linda Kouvaras: Piano Music, Chamber Works and Songs, Vol. 2 (Toccata Classics)

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Tiriki Onus (narrator), Coady Green (piano), Roger Alsop (sound design) – Herring Island Piano Sonata; Jane Magão (soprano), Karen Van Spall (mezzo-soprano), Georgia Lewis (piano) – Winter Came Early

Linda Kouvaras
Herring Island Piano Sonata
Winter Came Early

Toccata Classics TOCC0734 [78’33”] English text included
Producer / Engineer Haig Burnell

Recorded 16 & 24 November 2023 (Herring Island Piano Sonata), February 2024 (Winter Came Early)

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics issues the second volume in its ongoing survey of chamber and vocal works by Linda Kouvaras (b.1960), comprising two sizable pieces that examine those genres of the piano sonata and the song-cycle from unlikely while always thought-provoking perspectives.

What’s the music like?

A veteran of the New Wave scene from the early 1980s, Kouvaras studied in London and her native Melbourne where she has pursued her career as an academic and composer. Especially notable is her output for ensemble, with or without voices, which is currently being recorded by Toccata. Its second instalment demonstrates a keen sense of how to broaden and diversify genres that could all too easily be taken for granted as regards precedent then, in the process, making these relevant to the artistic and the cultural concerns of those having inspired them.

Inspired then dedicated to the physical and historical facets of an artificial islet in Melbourne, Herring Island Piano Sonata amalgamates an abstract entity with a text by N’arweet Carolyn Briggs and spoken by Tiriki Onus in the context of an environmental soundscape from Roger Alsop – though the piano component can also be performed independently (and can be heard here by selecting tracks 2, 3, 5 and 7). Musically it typifies Kouvaras’ predilection for modal harmonies and vibrant textures, allied to a determined if never excessive virtuosity. Just how far this three-way interplay comes together is for each listener to decide, though there can be no doubt as to the ambition of the whole. To which end, a visual (not necessarily illustrative) component might have helped with integrating these already interrelated aspects further still.

Written immediately before, Winter Came Early is a song-cycle to poems by Melbourne poet Catherine Lewis whose untimely death and her posthumous legacy is directly commemorated. The presence, indeed frequent concurrence, of two female voices represents a mother and her daughter – the latter being pianist Georgina Lewis who also contributes the central poem that gives the work its title – heard alternately and in dialogue, though this could be considered too much of a good thing given the overlap in vocal lines and consequent blurring of words such as makes it difficult (if not impossible) to discern what is being sung. Musically, the sequence alternates between knowledge of encroaching death and recollection of earlier but not always happier times, rounded off by an ‘Epilogue’ that sets the poet’s final love-note to her husband.

Does it all work?

For the most part. Kouvaras is evidently a composer with an inquiring mind and the means to realize her intentions, though the element of mixed media sometimes works to the detriment of her music by drawing attention away from its intrinsic content. All the performers provide contributions of unfailing sincerity, but there remains a feeling of sensory overload or merely reluctance to let this music speak on its own terms. Try those sonata tracks detailed above, or the final four tracks (11-14) of the song-cycle, to hear her music at its most communicative.

Is it recommended?

Yes, with these reservations in mind. Those who are unfamiliar with this composer would be best advised to start with the first volume in this survey (TOCC0729) with its works for solo piano or saxophone and piano that, in their different ways, find her music at its most potent.

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 performers Jane Magão, Karen Van Spall, Tiriki Onus, Coady Green, Georgina Lewis and Roger Alsop, and composer Linda Kouvaras

Published post no.2,916 – Saturday 12 June 2026

On Record – Moses Pergament Volume One: A Musical Miscellany (Toccata Classics)

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Martin Malmgren (piano) (all except Fantasia differente) with Tomas Nuñez (cello) (Meditations, Melodia romantica, Fantasia differente); musicians from Agora Music Collective [Sebastian Silén, Lea Tuuri (violins), Mathias Hortling (cello)] (Chanson triste); Helsinki Metropolitan Orchestra / Sasha Mäkilä (Piano Concerto); Helsinki Chamber Orchestra / Aku Sorensen (Fantasia differente)

Moses Pergament
Piano Concerto (1951-2)
Sorrow Op.5 (1908-09)
Lyrical Dances (1912-14)
King Solomon – Sulamith’s Dance
Chanson triste (both 1915)
The Feast of Esther (1936): Dance; Adagio
They Stakes their Lives (1939): The Mill, Minuet (both arr. Malgren), Valse lente
Festive Fanfare (1961, arr. composer)
For Nicole (1974)
Meditation (1974)
Meditation (1969)
Melodia romantica (1970)
Fantasia differente (1969)

Toccata Classics TOCC0728 [76’28”]
Producer Martin Malmgren Engineers Matti Heinonen, Sofia Riippi

Recorded 2021-2024, with full venue details here

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics issued the first in a series affording an overview of Moses Pergament (1893-1977), a Finnish-born Swedish composer, conductor and critic whose music received belated recognition in his lifetime and has received scant attention in the half-century since his death.

What’s the music like?

Not a few listeners (such as this reviewer) first encountered Pergament in Stig Westerberg’s recording of the ballet Krelantems och Eldeling, striking and eventful music which typifies his complex stylistic make-up overall. The present release ranges widely over Pergament’s output – thereby confirming his idiom to be less one of innate originality than a skilful and constantly evolving synthesis as draws on his Lithuanian ancestry, Finnish adolescence and Swedish maturity; all the while underpinned with elements drawn from his Jewish heritage.

This is nowhere better demonstrated than in his Piano Concerto. Whether or not the musical content infers any concrete programme, it provides a refreshing take on the three-movement archetype – taking in a tensile allegro prefaced by a commanding Maestoso, an eloquent and often plangent adagio, then a lively and increasingly propulsive Allegretto with the deftest of resolutions. Standing in a notable linage of such concertos by Hindemith (1945), Tcherepnin, Blacher (both 1947) and Rosenberg (1950), this is a significant work whose revival is timely.

The remainder of this anthology unfolds, chronologically, from the inwardly elegiac Sorrow and the quizzical playfulness of three Lyrical Dances, to the charged sensuality of Sulamith’s Dance then suffused lamenting (abetted in its revised scoring) of Chanson triste. Two pieces from a seemingly unused score for the play The Feast of Esther convey a calmly simmering intensity, and three pieces for the film They Staked their Lives yield an imaginative response to what appears a well-meaning but unintentionally hilarious perspective on Totalitarianism.

The proclamatory Festive Fanfare and touchingly evocative For Nicole lead into a group of cello pieces inspired by the artistry of Gaspar Cassadó. Although the latest of these, the solo Meditation sounds inwardly pensive next to the overt volatility of the eponymous duo from five years earlier or the distinctly equivocal interplay of Melodia romantica. The final piece also makes the deepest impact – Fantasia differente emerging as a processional of mounting anguish then sombre evanescence, its ‘Ciélo e térra’ subtitle hinting at an existential subtext.

Does it all work?

Pretty much throughout – owing not least to the commitment from these musicians, for whom making this album was far more than just another assignment. Above all, those contributions of Martin Malmgren who not only tackles the Piano Concerto with aplomb but also pens the detailed and what might be called ‘positively contentious’ notes on this composer’s life and music; part of a booklet which also includes a pertinent consideration of national identity by Henrik Rosengren. Those new to Pergament could hardly hope for a more inclusive context.

Is it recommended?

It is. Anyone suitably enthused should investigate releases on the Phono Suecia and Caprice labels, not least the choral symphony The Jewish Song regarded as Pergament’s masterpiece. The second volume of this Toccata Classics survey, devoted to songs, has just been released.

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 composer Moses Pergament and pianist Martin Malmgren

Published post no.2,911 – Monday 8 June 2026

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

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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)

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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)

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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