Anna Magdalena

All the works on this CD date from Ernst Tochs inter-war years, when he completely stripped his music of romanticism by disregarding late Romantic harmonic conventions and restrictions. 'What has always fascinated and impressed me from the beginning particularly in the works after 1918 is their reduction to the most important essentials. Every noteconveys the impression of being absolutely necessary, and not one is superfluous or replaceable. Ernst Tochs music displays conviction, and his story moves me in such a special way that I feel a great need to make his music accessible again to a broader public and to make my own contribution to the re-introduction of the most forgotten composer of the 20th century, as Toch often referred to himself in the final years of his life' Anna Magdalena Kokits.

Director: Chung Man Yee
Scruffy but irresistibly attractive Yau Muk-yan, without a job or a place to live, moves in with sensitive, shy piano tuner Chan Kar-fu. Both are disturbed, then obsessed, by the amateurish piano playing of upstairs neighbour Mok Man-yee. Obsession turns to romance, and romance to fantasy. The film is structured in four "movements": two themes (Yau Muk-yan, Mok Man-yee), a duet (Yau Muk-yan & Mok Man-yee), and a set of variations (a wild fantasy of Chan Kar-fu in his new novel).

Director: Chung Man Yee
Scruffy but irresistibly attractive Yau Muk-yan, without a job or a place to live, moves in with sensitive, shy piano tuner Chan Kar-fu. Both are disturbed, then obsessed, by the amateurish piano playing of upstairs neighbour Mok Man-yee. Obsession turns to romance, and romance to fantasy. The film is structured in four "movements": two themes (Yau Muk-yan, Mok Man-yee), a duet (Yau Muk-yan & Mok Man-yee), and a set of variations (a wild fantasy of Chan Kar-fu in his new novel).

Domestic music-making of a distinctly superior sort is lovingly recreated in a rare recording of the notebooks Bach presented to his second wife.

Domestic music-making of a distinctly superior sort is lovingly recreated in a rare recording of the notebooks Bach presented to his second wife.

Domestic music-making of a distinctly superior sort is lovingly recreated in a rare recording of the notebooks Bach presented to his second wife.

Scruffy but irresistibly attractive Yau Muk-yan, without a job or a place to live, moves in with sensitive, shy piano tuner Chan Kar-fu. Both are disturbed, then obsessed, by the amateurish piano playing of upstairs neighbour Mok Man-yee. Obsession turns to romance, and romance to fantasy. The film is structured in four "movements": two themes (Yau Muk-yan, Mok Man-yee), a duet (Yau Muk-yan & Mok Man-yee), and a set of variations (a wild fantasy of Chan Kar-fu in his new novel).