The Leading Classical Music Label Direct To You

Read reviews, listen to the music, and purchase the CD TOCH: Tanz-Suite / Cello Concerto

Customer Service Toll Free 866.489.4152

Flash 9 required. Click to download.

Narrow your search
with our Music Browser

Classical Music

        Ballet
        Chamber Music
        Choral
        Concertos
        Film Music
        Folk Legends
        Instrumental
        Musicals
        Opera / Operetta
        Orchestral
        Vocal

Recently Released

Upcoming Releases

Clearance

NaxosDirect Podcasts

Other Genres:

Audio Books

        Anthologies / Collections
        Arts
        Biographies
        Children's Classics
        Classic Fiction
        Great Epics and Tales
        History
        Junior Classic Fiction
        Junior History
        Literature
        Music Biographies
        Music Education
        Non-Fiction
        Philosophy
        Plays - Others
        Plays - Shakespeare
        Poetry
        Religion
        Samplers
        Sports
        Wine Guide

DVD

        Ballet DVD
        Classical Concert
        Classical Documentary
        Dance Documentary
        Opera DVD
        Pop/Rock Concert

Jazz

Jazz Contemporary
Jazz Icons

Naxos Label

        Naxos American Classics
        Naxos Best Of...
        Naxos Box Sets
        Naxos Cinema Classics
        Naxos Classics
        Naxos DVD
        Naxos DVD-Audio
        Naxos Instrumental
        Naxos International
        Naxos Jazz
        Naxos Limited Edition
        Naxos Milken Archives
        Naxos Night Music
        Naxos Opera
        Naxos Orchestral
        Naxos Samplers
        Naxos Special Release
        Naxos Wind Band Classics
        Naxos World

New Age

SACD

Wind Band

World

        Ballad
        Bhuddist
        Chinese Music
        Classical (World)
        Early Music (World)
        Folk
        Gamelan
        Gypsy
        Hindustani
        Jazz (World)
        Klezmer
        Sufi
        Vocal (World)
        World

Labels
Composers
Conductors
Ensembles
Orchestras
Choirs
Artists
Instruments
Producers

TOCH: Tanz-Suite / Cello Concerto

Home

Classical Music

Concertos

View large image

Total playing time: 00:57:34

$8.99
$6.74 (CD)

In Stock - Usually ships within 24 hours.

Add to del.icio.us del.icio.us Icon

digg this

StumbleUpon StumbleUpon Icon

Link to this CD Link to this page

Ernst Toch (1887-1964) Tanz-Suite, Op. 30 • Cello Concerto, Op. 35 Silence is part of music's morality. One does not hear the unwritten works and the...

Read more about this recording

Ernst Toch (1887-1964)

Tanz-Suite, Op. 30 • Cello Concerto, Op. 35

Silence is part of music's morality. One does not hear the unwritten works and the creative silence but they influence everything which will be written afterwards. They are part of the artistic essence and character of an artist just as much as the works which were finished. The same holds true for Ernst Toch. His works fall into two large groups, works composed up to 1938 and those composed after 1945. Having lived in Berlin since 1929, Toch left Germany shortly after the National Socialist party took power and emigrated, via Paris, to London. before finally settling in the United States.

Born in Vienna, Toch received the Mozart prize in 1909 and the Mendelssohn prize in 1910. He was, to a large extent, self-taught. Not only was he able to claim a place for himself in the vivacious music scene of the early twentieth century, but developed into one of the most often performed serious composers through his sheer creative energy and intellectual scope. This was the state of his reputation at the time he left Berlin in 1933 to finish and synchronize his great music score for Katharina die Große (Catherine the Great). He would never return to Germany or Austria again. Ernst Toch died at almost 77 years of age on 1 October 1964, in Santa Monica where, after a two-year period in New York, he spent altogether 28 years, the longest period living in one place in his whole life.

The fact that Toch could not achieve the level of success in the United States that he enjoyed in Europe was accepted by him as a fate largely shared with other immigrants. His music, which came to terms with all modern musical trends in an idiosyncratic and creative way, without being completely committed to any one, seemed certain of broad acceptance, as had happened with Igor Stravinsky and Paul Hindemith. Yet Toch was not good at selling himself. "He could not even promote a glass of water" (Herbert Zipper). He initially concentrated his energies on rescuing his relatives, amid the developments in and around Germany, from Nazi-persecution and helping them to emigrate to America. He later became deeply depressed as he was not able to save numerous relatives from the Holocaust. From 1938 to 1945 Ernst Toch wrote almost nothing that he wanted to conceive and elaborate on, writing practically only film scores from which he was able to earn a living for himself and his family.

The Tanz-Suite, Op. 30, and the Cello Concerto, Op. 35, written in 1923 and 1924 in Mannheim, where Toch had been a professor of composition at the Musikhochschule since 1913, are associated with his successful career during the 1920s; they show his individual and integrating position amid the different currents and trends of the post-war period of disruption. The Cello Concerto was published in 1925 by Schott in Mainz. The score bears the following imprint: "Awarded a prize in the 1925 publishing-house competition".

In his Tanz-Suite for chamber ensemble, with prominent percussion, Toch comes to terms with contemporaries such as Igor Stravinsky and Béla Bartók. Bartók composed his Tanz-Suite like Toch in 1923; Stravinsky had compiled already before the First World War excerpts from his ballets into suites for concert performance. Toch's Dance Suite consists of six characteristic movements of different lengths, written like miniature dance scenes, structured in short but distinctive sections which are partly repeated and varied. One can imagine various kinds of choreographies: a ballet with a fantasy story (the music assumes a narrative quality over a longer period), an abstract ballet which leaves the responsibility for the inner coherence to the music, or a piece in the mood of Oskar Schlemmer's Triadic Ballet, replacing human dancers with movable puppets. All three types were cultivated during the 1920s, and Toch was more or less focused equally on all three forms (even if the Triadic Ballet only appeared a few years after the Tanz-Suite).

A concert performance without the visual aspect of the dance gives the listener not only the opportunity of free association but also draws one's attention to the musical structure such as the relationship between solo phrases and duos, trios and ensembles. The dance is sublimated in itself, the individual actions of the protagonist, the Pas de deux, Pas de trois and group dances. The art of dance has thus become music with its complete spectrum of expressions from the elegaic to the grotesque. The beginning is conceived as an overture; the finale is a great waltz scene. Calm and animated, melancholic and serene, with intervening alternating bitter-sweet and ironic phrases. Toch's Dance Suite comes at the point of intersection of several tendencies of the 1920s. The composer was on the promising path to success.

The Cello Concerto, Op. 35, combines modernity with musical immediateness, thus being close to Paul Hindemith's chamber works for solo instrument and ensemble. Despite its symphonic dimensions it was composed as a chamber concerto for a soloist and eleven players. Toch took up a trend which was expressed in Schoenberg's and Schreker's Kammersymphonien and in Alban Berg's Kammerkonzert. All these works aimed at transparency, clarity of musical movement, distinctness of each single incident and at inner logic. Toch also enriched his instrumentation with an unusual display of percussion.

The first movement impresses with a delicate and subtle texture where the main events return again and again, only to integrate themselves back into the filigree texture. The soloist has the leading part, playing now and then by himself, most of the time as first among equals. The whole movement is composed like a multilayered dialogue, like finely illuminated dialectics between the individual and the whole. The fast second movement is one of those pieces which one would describe as 'motoric'. Toch's kinetic energy occurs when quick march-like rhythms meet unbroken elements which can build up to a perpetuum mobile. In contrast the third movement starts more introspectively with a cello solo, an expressive melody. The solo part gradually fans out into a complete ensemble of the strings before the oboe introduces an additional melody. The brilliance of the last movement comes from the virtuoso collaboration of the individual players and the ensemble.

Habakuk Traber

English translation: Markus Koch

Disc 1

Tanz-Suite, Op. 30

(more info)

Composed by: Ernst Toch
Conducted by: Thomas Carroll
Hartmut Rohde, viola
Marieke Schneemann, flute
Lars Wouters van den Oudenweijer, clarinet
Stacey Watton, double bass
Priya Mitchell, violin
Daniel Tummes, percussion
Recording date: 1 - 3 May 2006
Produced by: Franke, Christoph

I. Ansturmend, ziemlich rasch (Roter Wirbeltanz) - 4:50
II. Schwer, lastend (Tanz des Grauens) - 5:55
III. Intermezzo: Fliessende Achtel - 2:42
IV. Gemessen (Tanz des Schweigens) - 4:13
V. Intermezzo: Lebhaft - 2:42
VI. Massige Viertel (Tanz des Erwachens) - 9:31

Cello Concerto, Op. 35

(more info)

Composed by: Ernst Toch
Conducted by: Thomas Carroll
Christian Poltera, cello
Recording date: 3 May 2006
Produced by: Franke, Christoph

I. Allegro assai moderato - 10:36
II. Agitato - 3:09
III. Adagio - 9:32
IV. Allegro vivace - 4:24

Reviews

Be the first to review this title

Sign Up For Newsletter

FREE SHIPPING on orders
of 5 items or more!

Earn Naxos Rewards Points by opening an account and buying your favorite music today! Create your account here.

See all of our great site features here.

Flash 9 required. Click to download.

Composer(s):
Toch, Ernst

Conductor(s):
Carroll, Thomas

Artist(s):
Mitchell, Priya; Oudenweijer, Lars Wouters van den; Poltera, Christian; Rohde, Hartmut; Schneemann, Marieke; Tummes, Daniel; Watton, Stacey

Label: Naxos American Classics
UPC: 636943928226
Item Number: 8559282
Release Date: Oct 31, 2006

TOCH: Tanz-Suite / Cello Concerto

186

Your name:
Your email:
Friend's Name:
Friend's Email:
Write a personalized message:

Your name:
Rating:
Title:
Review:

TOCH: Tanz-Suite / Cello Concerto

$8.99$6.74 (CD)

Reviews

$8.99
$6.74 (CD)