Toccata Classics will launch two new releases of music by British composers Arnold Cooke and Charles Harford Lloyd on 5 September.
- Arnold Cooke: Complete String Quartets, Vol. Two
The music of the Yorkshire-born Arnold Cooke (1906–2005) – inventively contrapuntal, lyrical and energetic in turns – does not deserve the neglect it suffered even in its composer’s lifetime. This second album of two presenting all five of Cooke’s string quartets underlines his reputation for resourceful craftsmanship, presented in a style which sits downstream from Hindemith, with whom he studied in Berlin, and from Bartók.
There is also a surprisingly strong dance element in all three works heard here, though tempered, even in their lighter moments, by something of the emotional reticence of Britten’s quartets.
- Charles Harford Lloyd: Chamber Music for Clarinet
Charles Harford Lloyd (1849–1919) – organist of Gloucester Cathedral and the Chapel Royal, Oxford theologian and concert organiser, music master at Eton and much more – was one of the most distinguished musicians of Victorian England.
The largest part of his output is vocal music, mostly for the church; he composed only a handful of chamber works, often involving the clarinet. He wrote in a light Romantic idiom, where the influence of Brahms is often audible, as with his close friend, Hubert Parry. Lloyd knew how to make the clarinet sing, with one lovely, long-limbed melody after another. This first-ever album of his chamber music rescues a long-forgotten figure from the shadows.