This fourth Toccata Classics album of the chamber music of Gerard Schurmann – born in the former Dutch East Indies in 1924, naturalised Briton and now a resident of Los Angeles – adds two major song-cycles (one of them written for Britten and Pears) and works for flute and piano to the mix, in a distinctly personal language derived from influences ranging from Javanese gamelan to Bartók and Britten. Schurmann’s music somehow manages to blend elegant intensity and touching lyricism, with a result balanced between strength and sensitivity.

The American tenor Randall Bills has earned particular acclaim in Mozart and Rossini, appearing in a wide range of opera houses and festivals in Europe and the Americas.

The American pianist Mark Robson studied in Paris with Yvonne Loriod; as a composer, he has been programmed in concerts in Barcelona, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Paris, and he is also a graduate of the comedy improv programme at Bang Studio in Los Angeles.

Maxim Rubtsov, born in 1977 in Bryansk, Russia, began to study piano at age five. At age seven he danced with the famous Moiseyev Dance Company and only later began flute lessons, subsequently graduating with an advanced degree in music from the Moscow State Conservatoire. He joined the flute section of the Russian National Orchestra in 1999 and was appointed Associate Principal the following year.

The pianist Mikhail Korzhev, who currently serves on the faculty of California State University at Fullerton and Chapman University, recorded the complete piano concertos by Ernst Krenek for Toccata Classics in 2016 and 2017.