Toch: Complete Symphonies (3CD)

During his final years the composer himself spoke wistfully of himself as ‹the most forgotten composer in the world»; he too was a victim of Nazi madness, and for this reason we are happy to have rehabilitated him with our complete edition of his symphonies on three CDs – now available at a special reduced price in a boxed set. Ernst Toch was born in Vienna in 1887 as the son of a Jewish merchant of modest means and died in Los Angeles in 1964, and the places and times of his biography speak volumes. During the 1920s he was one of the most esteemed Austrian composers; conductors such as Erich Kleiber, Hermann Scherchen, Otto Klemperer, and Wilhelm Furtwängler performed his works; and then 1933 came, when Toch, fortunately was able to emigrate in time to the United States. Here he long kept his head above water by teaching. After a long period of creative paralysis, his compositional energy quite literally exploded after World War II. With an immense urge to express himself musically, he wrote seven symphonies within the shortest time and with them music that immediately appeals to the listener, in a modern form but with a romantic stance. Toch never denied his Austrian roots, and Mozart and Schubert were his musical gods. With technical mastery and the highest artistic candor, he added a musical color all of his own to the stylistic pluralism of the early twentieth century – and now it has finally been heard! In America he was praised for his mastery of contrapuntal design, wealth of color, and seemingly boundless powers of imagination.