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Korean violinist In Mo Yang, First Prize Winner of the 2014 Concert Artists Guild Competition, has been hailed by the Boston Globe for his “…seamless technique and a tender warmth of tone,” combined with “…an ability to project an engaging sense of inner sincerity through his playing.” In March 2015, he won the 54th International Violin Competition “Premio Paganini” in Genoa, Italy, marking the first time since 2006 that the Paganini Competition jury has awarded the First Prize. He also garnered the following special prizes: Youngest finalist; Best performance of the contemporary original piece; and Performance most appreciated by the audience, confirming The Violin Channel’s praise of In Mo as “one of the new generation’s most talented young string virtuosi.”

Some composers – Enescu, Schumann and Szymanowski among them – have had a go at adding piano accompaniments to Paganini’s 24 Capricci for solo violin, but the Ukrainian Myroslav Skoryk (b. 1938) is the first composer to go the whole hog and orchestrate all 24 of them. His orchestrations have turned Paganini’s virtuosic violin-writing into a succession of symphonic fireworks, often injecting a touch of humour along the way. This recording is released to mark Myroslav Skoryk’s 80th birthday. It is the first of a series of collaborations planned between Toccata Classics and the Lviv International Symphony Orchestra in Lviv, western Ukraine.

Niccolò Paganini is possibly the only figure in the field of classical music whose name has become a household word, equivalent with an almost supernatural excellence in any kind of human endeavour: from soccer to stock market analysis or haute cuisine. In a similar way, the last of his 24 Caprices has entered popular culture in a way that few other classical pieces have, its theme reused by musicians as diverse as Benny Goodman, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Yngwie Malmsteen.

Tomoharu Ushida won the 2nd Prize, the Mayer of Warsaw Prize and the Audience Prize in the 10th Hamamatsu International Piano Competition, held in 2018. Tomoharu Ushida was born in Iwaki City, Fukushima Prefecture, in 1999. Soon after his birth, his family moved to Shanghai, where his father was transferred for work. It was there that Tomoharu began his piano studies.

The 20th century, the century of totalitarianism, has undoubtedly been marked by the horror of mass, industrialized crime. The world of music, like any other, could not have been oblivious to the ominous events brought by, as Karl Popper would say, the enemies of open society. Accordingly, we find a wide range of attitudes, from musicians of unwavering affinity towards totalitarian regimes, to those who were ousted, or in the worst of cases, even murdered by their compatriots in power. None of the three composers present on this album are at any of the extremes mentioned, but their respective biographies were indelibly marked by Soviet repression or National Socialism, or at worst by both. Beyond these historical circumstances, the great success of Mario Prisuelos in making this programme has been to detect how the three works he has chosen for his recording, written in a time interval of approximately a quarter of a century, are exemplary in terms of reflecting certain aesthetic changes of his time. (José L.Besada)”

With grace and beauty, Gloria Campaner walks onto international stages leaving behind her unique moments of profound, human truth.

Charles Richard-Hamelin continues his exploration of Frédéric Chopin’s oeuvre with this recording of the Preludes, op. 28, and the "Andante spianato et Grande polonaise brillante, op. 22".

The transcendental heroics of Paganini’s Caprices have presented the ultimate test for generations of violinists; Alina Ibragimova’s accounts of this most exclusive repertoire join a select few of the most celebrated.

A renaissance artist for modern times, Lera Auerbach is a widely recognized conductor, pianist, and composer. She is also a published poet and an exhibited visual artist. All of her work is interconnected as part of a cohesive and comprehensive artistic worldview. Born in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in the Ural Mountains at the gateway of Siberia, Lera Auerbach has become one of today’s most sought after and exciting creative voices.