Search - Ernst Toch, Alun Francis, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra :: Ernst Toch: Complete Symphonies - Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin / Alun Francis

All of Toch's Symphonies at a Real Bargain Price

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 05/26/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The cpo label seems to go in for 'the complete [symphonies, piano works, string quartets] of' various composers, usually composers whose works are not widely represented on disc, and we're the richer for that. That certainly is the case with Ernst Toch (1887-1964) whose symphonies, string quartets and piano music have all come out on cpo. He was one of the 'entartete' ('degenerate', read 'Jewish') composers whose music was suppressed by the Nazis and who left Hitler's Germany in the 1930s. He wound up in Los Angeles and indeed all his symphonies were written in the US. Unfortunately, although he had been an important composer in Germany, his music was virtually neglected in America, and except for the Third Symphony which received the Pulitzer Prize and a very fine recording by William Steinberg and the Pittsburgh Symphony, his music went mostly unheard. This is a shame because these works are very much worth hearing. cpo had brought out three volumes of his symphonies in single discs and now they are collected in a 3-CD box and offered at a bargain price -- less than ten dollars a pop. And if that weren't enough, it is hard to imagine the symphonies getting more sympathetic treatment than those they receive from the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra under Alun Francis, a conductor who has also brought us similar performances of music by such poorly known but worthy composers as Karl Weigl, Humphrey Searle, Alan Pettersson and Ludwig Thuille, as well as the complete symphonies of Darius Milhaud.



Here at Amazon there are customer reviews (including one by me) for all the symphonies as released singly and I would suggest you read those. The works and performances have uniformly been praised. It is hard to describe Toch's style but there are elements of Hindemith, Shostakovich, Martinu, even Mahler in his music, but his voice is inimitably his own. He is capable of sarcasm, lyricism, tenderness, coldness, impressionistic haze, expressionistic violence and always there is expert counterpoint and firm grasp of form. Booklet notes by the composer's grandson, Lawrence Weschler, and by Constanze Stratz are very helpful.



Since the complete symphonies are available for such a low price, I'd suggest anyone interested in becoming familiar with them go ahead and spring for the whole set, rather than buying the symphonies in single-disc form. As for his other music: his piano music, mostly from early in his career, is, although recognizably Tochian, not the composer at his best. His string quartets, though, may very well be the pinnacle of his art, and they are also available on cpo; actually not all are available -- Quartets 1-6 are student works and have not been recorded. Nos. 7-13, although recorded on single discs at full price, have not as far as I know been collected into a set; perhaps that will be cpo's next Toch project and worth the wait.



Scott Morrison"