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"forgotten
music by great composers, great music by forgotten composers" 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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