"forgotten
music by great composers, great music by forgotten composers" Robert
Reilly, Crisis Magazine
Toccata
Classics has been created expressly to explore unjustly neglected
repertoire. A number of brave independent CD labels -- chief among them
BIS, Hyperion and Naxos -- have for some years been bringing out recordings
of less well known repertoire alongside their more mainstream releases.
Toccata
Classics is the first label to tackle forgotten repertoire head on,
recording only the music that has not yet gained the audience it deserves.
Because
Toccata Classics can promise music-lovers a string of first recordings,
it can adopt a business plan which allows a bolder approach to neglected
music than has been possible to date -- check out the Toccata
Classics Discovery Club for details.
The amount
of music awaiting discovery is staggering. Incredibly, only one of Reicha's
40 or so string quartets is on CD; there are quite literally hundreds
of Lassus motets that have still to be recorded, and around 40 of Palestrina's
masses -- and there's almost nothing of Palestrina's successor, Giovanni
Maria Nanino, on disc. The music of Nordic and Baltic composers is inadequately
represented on CD, as is the work of non-operatic Italian composers such
as Pizzetti and Ghedini. The collapse of Communism has opened up dozens
of other European countries whose rich musical traditions are as good
as unknown. South American composers have yet to make the impact of their
North American colleagues. British Romantics like Algernon Ashton and
Percy Sherwood are as good as unknown. These are only some of the treasure
troves that Toccata Classics will be exploring.
Toccata
Classics will be working in close collaboration with Toccata
Press -- a unique symbiosis of record label and publishing house --
so that recordings and books can shed light upon each other. Books on
(for example) Adolf Busch, Ludvig Irgens-Jensen and Engelbert Humperdinck
will be accompanied by recordings of their music. Existing Toccata Press
titles -- on, for instance, George Enescu, Franz Schmidt, Havergal Brian
and Luigi Dallapiccola -- will now be illuminated by recordings of works
previously unavailable. And customers of Toccata Classics recordings enjoy
a discount on Toccata Press books (and vice versa!).
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