Here at last is the next instalment of what Guy Rickards in Gramophone called ‘an enterprise quite unprecedented in modern composition – or recording’. When Yodit Tekle was diagnosed with stomach cancer in late 2014, her partner, Martin Anderson, who runs Toccata Classics, asked a few composer friends to write some music for strings to bring her comfort in her illness. To his surprise, almost everyone he asked generously agreed, and so the project snowballed: there are now over 100 composers who have written or agreed to write for it – in an undertaking that is probably unique in the history of music. This second volume presents twelve more pieces – all in their first recordings, of course – in an initiative which, in effect, transforms love into something you can hear.

Paul Mann is a regular guest conductor with many orchestras throughout Europe, the USA, Australia and the Far East. He enjoyed a famous collaboration with the legendary rock group Deep Purple and was a close friend of its keyboard player, Jon Lord. He first came to international attention as first prizewinner in the 1998 Donatella Flick Conducting Competition, as a result of which he was also appointed assistant conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. He made his LSO debut soon afterwards, and subsequently worked frequently with the Orchestra, both in the concert hall and recording studio. This is the latest fruit of his collaboration with Toccata Classics – their thirteenth recording together.