Toccata for Orchestra

Alexander Yosifov composed his Toccata for symphony orchestra in 1992, and it stands at the point where two strands of his work meet. Yosifov, born in 1940, spent much of his life close to the traditions of Bulgarian folk music and to the choral and orchestral forms that carry them; he also wrote with an ear for the driving, motoric rhythm that the twentieth century took from the baroque toccata and gave to the full orchestra. The piece is short and unbroken. A single rhythmic figure sets it going and never entirely releases its hold, passing between the strings, the woodwind and the percussion while the harmony shifts underneath it. What keeps it from being merely brilliant is the metrical irregularity: the accents fall where Bulgarian dance would place them rather than where a Western bar line would, so that the momentum keeps tipping slightly forward. The Sofia Philharmonic played it on 9 February 2006 in a concert devoted entirely to Yosifov's music, alongside his Second Violin Concerto and the Fifth Piano Concerto, which had been completed the year before.