Japanese Orchestral Favourites

Description

Japanese Orchestral FavouritesIn the second half of the sixteenth century Japan, for a time, acceptedEuropean music, but this acceptance was cut short by the policy that rejectedall European influences. It was only in the second half of the nineteenth centurythat the door was opened again to Europe and that European music once morefound a place. In 1921 the first Japanese work for a European-style orchestrawas composed, the Overture by K??s?ºakYamada, who had studied in Berlin. Thereafter the number of orchestral works byJapanese composers increased steadily, so that, from the later 1930s untiltoday, there are annually some thirty such compositions, mounting sometimes toas many as a hundred. The present collection includes six of those best known inJapan, with four of them based on the traditional Japanese pentatonic scale.Yuzo Toyama was born in Tokyo in 1931. He studied composition underKan'-ichi Shimofusa, a pupil of Hindemith and a conducting student of Kurt Wossand Wilhelm Loibner, both of whom conducted the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyoin the 1950s. Toyama has served as the principal conductor of a number oforchestras in Japan. As a composer he has been under the influence of Bartokand Shostakovich in particular, and like Kodaly he attaches great importance tothe use of folk melodies in his works. Among these are two symphonies, threepiano concertos and two violin concertos. His Rhapsody was written in 1960 as an encore piece for the Europeantour of the NHK Symphony Orchestra in which he took part as a conductor. Itstarts with repeated sounds from the hyoshigi,a pair of wood blocks, as used in Kabuki theatre, and is followed by themelodies of a series of well-known Japanese folk-songs. The tune of Antagata dokosa ('Where are you from?')is heard from the trumpet, the Hokkaido fishermen's song Soran-bushi from the brass, a banquet song Tankou-bushi ('Coalminers' song') from Kyushu on the strings andanother banquet song from the Kansai area, Kushimoto-bushifrom the flute. A pack-horse driver's song, Oiwake-bushi,from the highlands of central Japan, the Nagano region, softly played on theflute, constitutes the central section of the whole work, which ends with Yagi-bushi, a festival song handed downin the Kanto area, providing an emphatic finale.Hidemaro Konoye was born in 1898 into a high-ranking aristocraticfamily, the brother of the prime minister of Japan about the year 1940. Hestudied composition under K??s?ºak Yamada in Tokyo and later in Europe underVincent d'Indy and Max von Schillings, with conducting under Erich Kleiber. Hewas not only an important conductor in Japan but also conducted orchestras inabroad, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the orchestra of La Scala, Milan andthe NBC Symphony Orchestra. He conducted the first recording of Mahler's Symphony No.4 and was part of a socialcircle that included Furtwangler and Richard Strauss. He died in 1973. Konoyewrote original compositions, but was more deeply interested in arranginge