Ernst Toch: Solo Piano Pieces

All the works on this album derive from the inter-war years, i.e. the period in which Toch completely de-romanticized his music by disregarding late Romantic harmonic conventions and restrictions. "What has always fascinated and impressed me from the outset - particularly in the works after 1918 - is their reduction to the essential and salient. Every note conveys the impression of being absolutely necessary, and not one is superfluous or replacable. Ernst Toch's music is convincing, and his story moves me in such a special way that I feel a great need to make his music accessible to a broader public again and to contribute my share towards re-integrating the "most forgotten composer of the 20th century", as he often called himself in teh final years of his life, in musical life today." (Anna Magdalena Kokits)