Like Korngold, Schoenberg, Zeisl and Zemlinsky, Richard Stöhr (1874–1967) was another Austrian composer driven into American exile by the Nazis. Stöhr’s generous output of music – ripe for rediscovery – includes seven symphonies, fifteen violin sonatas among much other chamber music, songs, and choral and piano pieces.

His two works for cello and piano – the four Fantasiestücke of 1907 and a Sonata from 1915, recorded here in the first of a series of CDs devoted to Stöhr’s music – reveal a composer with a lyrical and expressive language downstream from Brahms and Schumann.

The disc continues the Toccata Classics rediscovery of composers who suffered under the Third Reich, including Ben-Haim, Busch, Gál, Krenek, Raphael, Reiner, Sekles and Weinberg.


Stefan Koch is a member of the Lansing Symphony and is a frequent performer with the Kalamazoo Symphony, West Michigan Symphony, Toledo Symphony, Michigan Opera Theatre and Grand Rapids Symphony orchestras. Robert Conway is an associate professor of piano at Wayne State University (Detroit) and orchestral keyboardist with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

First recordings.