Gerard Schurmann celebrates his 93rd birthday with this third Toccata Classics album of his chamber music.

Schurmann was born in the former Dutch East Indies in 1924, became a naturalised Briton (making a name for himself a composer of film music while he lived in Britain) and is now a resident of Los Angeles. His two piano quartets, downstream from Bartók, Shostakovich and Britten, present a wide range of moods, from broad and stately tempi to passages of driving energy and excitement. He was in his mid-seventies when he wrote Piano Quartet no.2 but it buzzes with youthful vigour. Their quasi-symphonic ambit is contrasted with the tart miniatures of the Serenade for solo violin and the tail-chasing vivacity of Two Violins – written only in 2015.

The musicians on this release are mostly based in the Los Angeles area. The Lyris Quartet, founded in 2008, has premiered the music of many living Los Angeles composers. This is the group’s second recording for Toccata Classics: they perform Gerard Schurmann’s First and Second String Quartets on TOCC0220. Alyssa Park, violin, established an enviable international reputation at age sixteen for being the youngest prize-winner in the history of the Tchaikovsky International Competition. She is a founder member of the Lyris Quartet, in which Shalini Vijayan is second violin. The Canadian violinist Martin Beaver was first violin of the world-renowned Tokyo String Quartet from June 2002 until its final concert in July 2013. The pianist Mikhail Korzhev, who is currently on the faculty of California State University at Fullerton, has also recorded music by Gerard Schurmann for Toccata Classics, but it is his playing in the complete piano concertos of Ernst Krenek (on Toccata Classics TOCC0323 and 03982) that has garnered the loudest praise.