This new series from Toccata Classics presents the music of a composer-conductor from Victorian England who has entirely disappeared from music history.
Henry Cotter Nixon (1842–1907) turns out to have been one of the most accomplished English composers of his generation, with a style that takes in elements of Mendelssohn, Schumann, Verdi and Brahms.
This series of three albums presents all his surviving orchestral music in its first-ever recordings.
Nixon labelled his five-movement Palamon and Arcite a symphonic poem, and indeed, it is one of the first by a British composer, but in fact, it is more of a programmatic symphony, of the sort then being written by composers such as Goldmark and Raff.
Ana Török is concert-master of the Transylvania State Philharmonic Orchestra of Cluj-Napoca, and also of the Romanian National Youth Orchestra. She is also a founding member of the Arcadia Quartet, winner of the International Chamber Music Competition Hamburg in 2009, the International Wigmore Hall London String Quartet Competition in 2012 and the Osaka International Chamber Music Competition in 2014.
Paul Mann is a regular guest-conductor with many orchestras throughout Europe, the USA, Australia and the Far East. He is well known for his collaboration with the legendary rock group Deep Purple; among his more recent recordings is the first-ever studio account of Jon Lord’s Concerto for Group and Orchestra. This is his fifth recording for Toccata Classics: the others have featured the music of Leif Solberg (TOCC 0260), Charles O’Brien (TOCC0262 and 0263) and the first volume in a remarkable series of new works for string orchestra, Music For My Love (TOCC 0333), featuring music written in memory of Yodit Tekle, the partner of Martin Anderson of Toccata Classics. Paul Mann’s further recordings of the complete orchestral music of Henry Cotter Nixon, also with the Kodály Philharmonic Orchestra, are in preparation (TOCC0373 and 0374).
