Toch: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 4

Album review

Was Ernst Toch one of the great unknowns? Or just one of the unknowns? Or was the life and music of Toch too disrupted by fascists and fragmented by war to ever yield a coherent judgment? Thanks to conductor Alun Francis and the Berliner Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester, there is now knowledge of all seven of Toch's symphonies. With this final volume with the Symphony No. 1 and No. 4, it is known how Toch began life as a symphonist in 1950 at the age of 63 having returned to Vienna from his exile in the parched hills of Hollywood. In Francis' interpretation, Toch was one wild, wise, witty, and especially energetic old man. In the R.S.O.'s performance, Toch was a brilliant orchestrater, a great contrapuntist, and a masterful symphonic thinker even in this, his first symphonic thought. And thanks to Francis and the R.S.O., it is known how Toch thanked Marian MacDowell for her gracious patronage in his Symphony No. 4 from 1957. Toch has only gotten wiser and wilder with age and his score sounds as much like the work of an American composer in the transcendentalist vein as it does an Austrian in the atonal vein. Francis and the R.S.O. perform fabulously well and as if from long knowledge and affection for the scores. CPO's sound is a little hard but very vivid.
© TiVo