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British Music Society review: Quintets CD and Harpsichord Inventions CD
June 05, 2017
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"Toccata continues its excellent mission to propagate the music of Stephen Dodgson whilst Naxos has also done the composer proud with its disc of 24 Inventions for Harpsichord. Everything here is a premiere recording....
The performances are uniformly splendid and the church acoustic has been well judged. John Warrack’s notes are similarly first-class... The recording quality is excellent. Let’s hope there are many more such excellent discs before the centenary of Dodgson’s birth in 2024."
Planet Hugill review of Dodgson Complete Music for Cello and Piano CD
June 05, 2017
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"The music is complex yet approachable, always with a spicy twist to the harmony. I found the musical language rather reminiscent of that of Kenneth Leighton with the combination of melodic fragments and toughness...
The performances from Evva Mizerska and Emma Abbate are excellent, with the two demonstrating the sort of balanced partnership which the music presupposes. Both bring out the lyricism, fascination and challenge of Dodgson's music."
Fanfare magazine review of Dodgson Complete Music for Cello and Piano CD
May 10, 2017
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Once the music reveals its secrets, it becomes intensely appealing... Five Occasional Pieces, like the other works on the album, are the products of an original, highly distinctive, consistently surprising voice, making what is now the collection devoted entirely to Dodgson’s music long overdue.
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The Boat Race – Barnes Music Festival
April 19, 2017
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Late last month I joined a throng of excited parents and music-lovers attending a delightful concert at St Mary’s church, Barnes, which featured the music of Stephen Dodgson. The concert was part of the fifth Barnes Music Festival. The Dodgson works, all on the subject of London, rivers or the Boat Race, interwove the festival’s theme of ‘Music & Place’ as well as being superbly timed ahead the actual 2017 Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race a week later. The concert, set against a backdrop of an exquisite photography exhibition of nature and people around the River Thames and other locations, brought together […]
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Reflections on Suites for Clavichord – Marie van Rhijn
April 07, 2017
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In January this year, Marie van Rhijn performed several movements from Stephen Dodgson’s two Suites for Clavichord as part of her ‘Time Machine’ concert at the Handel House in London. Here, she tells us about performing these works. “On 10th January, I was delighted to perform several works by Stephen Dodgson at a recital for the British Clavichord Society and the British Harpsichord Society at the Handel and Hendrix House. I was lucky to play a beautiful clavichord by Peter Bavington. From the first suite, I chose first the ‘Plaint’, then the ‘Tambourin’. To me, those two movements really connect […]
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New recording released: Inventions for Harpsichord
April 05, 2017
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We’re very pleased to announce the release of the recording of 24 Inventions for Harpsichord by Stephen Dodgson (Sets 1-4), recorded by Ekaterina Likhina on Naxos. For more about the Ekaterina’s style and approach, and the recording process, see the earlier blog about the Inventions CD. The official blurb: “Stephen Dodgson won Royal Philharmonic Society prizes for his early compositions, which signalled his emergence as a significant figure in British musical life. Though he composed in most genres he wrote with particular distinction for guitar and harpsichord and his sets of Inventions for harpsichord span a period of almost forty years. Scarlatti remained his inspiration […]
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British Music Society review: Complete cello and piano works CD
April 03, 2017
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A gratifyingly insightful and complimentary review of the Stephen Dodgson ‘Complete Music for Cello and Piano’ by Jonathan Woolf in this month’s British Music Society newsletter: “Since Stephen Dodgson was fond of the medium of chamber music and as he wrote so well for the voice it’s not surprising that his cello works should be so infused with lyric-vocal qualities. The Cello Sonata of 1969 shows a fine conception of equals in a clearly structured three-movement work that reveals echoes of Bartókian Nocturne and a spare call-and-response between the instruments. There’s a certain refined introspection to Dodgson’s writing and an […]
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Quintets CD release – 1st March
February 22, 2017
We are delighted to announce the imminent release (1st March) of the next Toccata Classics Stephen Dodgson recording: three quintets performed by the Tippett Quartet, Emma Abbate (piano) and Susan Monks (cello). Piano Quintet No. 1 in C (1966) String Quintet (1986) Piano Quintet No. 2 (1999) These three quintets continue the exploration of his chamber music on Toccata Classics. Dodgson’s musical language inherited something of Shostakovich’s irony, Janáček’s spiky energy and Britten’s polished clarity, occasionally reaching further into the past in passages of Purcellian dignity, all animated with a gentle harmonic warmth of Dodgson’s own. The result, in a […]
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Cello and piano CD launch concert – 1st February
February 03, 2017
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On Wednesday, an intimate audience were treated to a beautiful performance of Stephen Dodgson’s Five Occasional Pieces at Emma Abbate and Evva Mizerska’s launch concert of their Toccata Classics recording of Dodgson cello and piano works. The performance was further enhanced by the elegant architecture of the St Margaret Pattens Church, a little gem of a church tucked away in the heart of the City of London. Alongside the Dodgson, Emma and Evva also performed Janáček’s Pohadka and Algernon Ashton’s Arioso which they have also recently recorded. Toccata’s Martin Anderson explained to us that Ashton, sadly forgotten but being gradually revived, wrote music […]
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