The three late symphonies of Ernst Toch were composed in 18 months. The composer was 76 years old at the time and dying of cancer. He wrote with overwhelming urgency and within a few months of completing the last, he was dead. They are emphatically not -- pace Bruckner,
Mahler, and
Shostakovich -- terror-stricken, death-haunted works but, except for the Sixth, all are light, graceful, as much effervescent as evanescent and much more of this world than the next. And even the Sixth rhapsodic poem, subtitled "Jephta," is more fervent in its mourning than funereal and more filled with love and compassion than doom and gloom.
In these marvelous recordings with
Alun Francis conducting the
Berliner Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester, Toch's late symphonies sound fresh and vivid, the works of a composer of incredible energy and enthusiasm.
Francis is sensitive to Toch's ecstatic sense of form, to his rapturous sense of rhythm, and most of all to his exquisite sense of lyricism. The
R.S.O. plays with power, precision, and most of all passion. CPO's sound is clear and immediate. Anyone who loves modernist symphonies will love this disc.