Momo Kodama / Seiji Ozawa / Mito Chamber Orchestra HOSOKAWA / MOZART

 

HOSOKAWA / MOZART

Mari & Momo Kodama / Sarah & Deborah Nemtanu MARTINU Double Concertos for Violin & Piano

Bohuslav Martinů’s distinctive musical voice, which infuses the great Czech tradition with modern idioms, is showcased in this captivating survey of his concertante works, performed by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Marseille conducted by Lawrence Foster. 

The Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra is a lively and rhythmic tour de force. Breezily energetic and relentless, it is full of jazzy inflections and high speed fireworks, pausing only in the tranquillity of the slow movement for moments of serene calm. By contrast, the Concerto for Two Violins and Orchestra is a warm, lyrical work in the Romantic tradition. With its intricate and interweaving solo lines, expansive melodies and dance-like syncopations it’s an engaging work of considerable charm which deserves a wider audience. The Rhapsody-Concerto for Viola and Orchestra is a dreamily nostalgic work whose simple melodies, radiant lyricism and soaring viola line make it one of the 20th century’s most performed viola concertos.

Momo Kodama DEBUSSY - HOSOKAWA Point and Line

Born in Osaka, educated at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris, Momo Kodama is well-placed to approach music from both Eastern and Western vantage points, as she does in this album which interweaves etudes of Claude Debussy (1862-1918) and Toshio Hosokawa (born 1955). Both composers have similarly been border-crossers. Debussy, pointing to music of the future, looked to the Orient for inspiration. Hosokawa has combined aspects of Japanese and European tradition in his contemporary compositions. Momo Kodama: “In the music of Toshio Hosokawa I find elements close to Debussy: the freedom of form and tone colour, the sense of poetic design, with a wide range of lyricism and dynamics, between meditation and virtuoso development, between light and shade, between large gestures and minimalist refinement.”
Point and Line is the pianist’s second ECM album and follows the widely-praised La vallée des cloches, with music of Ravel, Takemitsu and Messiaen, of which American Record Guide noted. “Kodama’s impeccable technique and facility for crystalline sounds makes for a mesmerizing program. “ (ECM Records) 

Point and Line is the pianist’s second ECM album and follows the widely-praised La vallée des cloches, with music of Ravel, Takemitsu and Messiaen, of which American Record Guide noted. “Kodama’s impeccable technique and facility for crystalline sounds makes for a mesmerizing program.

“The album is called ‘Point and Line’ after one of the Hosokawa studies, but that name also hints at the cool definition of Kodama’s playing. Her touch is immaculate and diligent, neatly flamboyant in the Debussy and reassuringly robust in the Hosokawa. She writes that both composers are ‘between meditation and virtuoso development, between light and shade, between large gestures and minimalist refinement’ – and it’s those places in between that make her interpretations interesting. (Kate Molleson / The Guardian) 

Japanese pianist Momo Kodama reaches halfway around the world and across a century of time to bring together the 12 late études of Debussy and six études written between 2011 and 2013 by her countryman, Toshio Hosokawa. […] Kodama eschews chronology and interweaves the pieces into a sometimes boundary-blurring sequence that trades on the cross-fertilisation between French and Japanese composers. Her performing style in the Debussy also tends to downplay the pieces’ étude-like nature. A fascinating collection. (Michael Dervan / The Irish Times)

Mari Kodama / Momo Kodama TCHAIKOVSKY Ballet Suites for Piano Duo

Together for the first time in the recording studio, the sisters Mari and Momo Kodama are on scintillating form in these lively arrangements of music from Tchaikovsky’s ballets Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker. In another first, the release contains the first ever recording of Arensky’s transcription of the timeless Nutcracker together with notable arrangements by Debussy and Rachmaninov. 

Conceived on a grand scale, Tchaikovsky’s colourful, often passionate scores for the ballets Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker abound with graceful melodies, arresting harmonies and exuberant orchestration. The music has proved enduringly popular with audiences and rates among his most familiar and best-loved works. Composers such as Arensky, Debussy and Rachmaninov made arrangements of these works for piano, not mere reductions but wholesale realisations of the works, combining subtlety and insight with their own technical polish. 

“Tchaikovsky was really the first composer to combine a broad sweep of ballet music with a great story,” the Kodama sisters write in their introduction to the release, “before that, it more resembled a compilation of pieces…in all three works there is folkloric and popular music. He has the great skill to make such vivid colours and textures on a large canvas… This makes his orchestral works very special.”

“Our challenge was to use just two pianos … to bring the same sense of scale,” they write, “with just two pianos the atmosphere is more intimate, it brings a different quality to the music. And the composers who made the transcriptions brought their own personality to bear on the works. So we tried to reflect that in our playing.”
The sisters Mari and Momo Kodama both pursue busy international careers. Momo specialises in French and Japanese composers and 20th century and contemporary composers; she has been widely praised for her ‘attractive, lyrical tone’ and ‘technical brilliance’. Mari has established an international reputation for profound musicality and articulate virtuosity; she has recorded extensively for PENTATONE, including an acclaimed cycle of the complete Beethoven piano sonatas.
“We are quite different pianists and have our own ideas and approaches,” they write, “so we have spirited discussions. But we always find we are aiming for the same thing, usually from a different angle. So it’s been fun to record these works and it has brought us a lot of sisterly joy too!”  (PENTATONE)

Momo Kodama LA VALLÉE DES CLOCHES Ravel / Takemitsu / Messiaen

Momo Kodama’s first ECM New Series album is a marvel, a mesmerizing journey from the shimmering surfaces of Miroirs, Maurice Ravel’s piano cycle of 1904-45 to Olivier Messiaen’s Fauvette des jardins (written in 1970), a late masterpiece of piano music from the visionary composer. Kodama’s insights into Messiaen’s sound-world enable her to convey his religious feeling for nature, for birdsong transfigured, through the compelling, insistent piano figures, into spiritual utterance. Linking Ravel’s valley of the bells and Messiaen’s open sound field is Toru Takemitsu’s Rain Tree Sketch (1982), music from the East informed by Western experiment, a Japanese reflection on French music. “Its opening bars” writes Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich in the liner notes, “evoke not only the rapturous crystalline chord progressions of Messiaen, but also the flashing, glittering sophistication of Ravel.”

Kodama has a personal perspective on dialogues of Orient and Occident. Born in Osaka, she spent her early childhood in Germany, moving to France at 13 to become the youngest student ever accepted at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique in Paris. Later there were studies with great pianists including Murray Perahia, András Schiff, Vera Gornostaeva and Tatiana Nikolaïeva. At 19 Momo Kodama was the Munich International Competition’s youngest prize winner.

She has gone on to play with leading orchestra of Japan, Europe and the US and worked with conductors including Seiji Ozawa, Kent Nagano, Roger Norrington, Charles Dutoit, Eliahu Inbal, Valery Gergiev and Lawrence Foster. Her chamber music partners include Steven Isserlis, Rohan de Saram, Renaud Capucon, Augustin Dumay and Jörg Widmann. Momo and sister Mari Kodama, meanwhile, form a piano duo that plays the core repertoire and premieres new works.

Momo Kodama’s recital repertoire reaches from Bach to the avant-garde. A major part of her performance schedule is dedicated to contemporary music, and Messiaen has been a special focus. In 2002, on the 10th anniversary of Messiaen's death, she performed his Turangalîla Symphony, Les Visions de l'Amen with her sister Mari, and Les vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus in a series of highly successful concerts. In the Messiaen centenary year 2008 she received awards in Japan for a concert series dedicated to the composer. At the Festival La Roque d'Antheréon 2006, at the urging of Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen, she premiered, with Isabelle Faust, Messiaen's Fantasie for violin and piano, a piece written in 1933 but never previously performed. Her recordings of the Vingt regards sur l’enfant-Jésus and the Catalogue d’Oiseaux for Triton, received high critical acclaim. In 2008 she commissioned Toshio Hosokawa’s Stunden Blumen, a work with the same instrumentation as Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps, and performed both pieces at festivals in Lucerne, Paris, Hamburg and Vienna.

A number of composers have written works for Kodama. She is also the dedicatee of works including Lichtstudie 3 by Jörg Widmann, which she premiered at the Lucerne Festival, and Echo by Ichiro Nodaira, which was composed for Momo and Mari Kodama.