Sinfonia Varsovia - Moritz Moszkowski: Orchestral Music, Volume One

The Polish composer Moritz Moszkowski (1854�1925) is best remembered for a handful of virtuoso piano pieces, but he also produced a substantial body of orchestral music, most of it unperformed for decades. Astonishingly, he was only in his early twenties when he wrote his monumental �Symphonic Poem in Four Movements� Johanna d�Arc � heard here in its first recording � a vast symphonic fresco depicting the life, death and transfiguration of the heroine of Friedrich Schiller�s 1801 play, Die Jungfrau von Orleans. Moszkowski admitted to the influence of Wagner and Raff on the work � but he also managed to prefigure the musical language of the Hollywood epics of sixty years later. As pianist, Ian Hobson has a long-standing relationship with Toccata Classics, and this is the fourth recording he has made in his alter ego as conductor � at the helm of the Sinfonia Varsovia, as with his previous albums, which uncovered the early orchestral music of Martin?. This is the first of a series of Ian Hobson recordings for Toccata Classics that will focus on Moszkowski�s piano and orchestral music.