The Amazing Adventures of Leopold Stokowski

Stokowski and Vaughan Williams, 1956

Time to appreciate Leopold Stokowski, whose many merits are obscured by negative reactions to his flamboyant showmanship, his exaggerated Slavic accent and his willingness to have fun with music, making zany transcriptions and appearing with Mickey Mouse in Fantasia.  Toscaninni, no slouch himself at self-promotion, might have been sniffy, but rivalry sometimes plays a part in assessments.  I like Stokowski's transcriptions - at least he was honest, as opposed to conducting his own take on things.  And what's wrong with bringing millions of kids, all over the world, to classical music via Disney ?  At the moment, I am on a Stokowski listening kick, impressed by his dedication to music.  

The name "Leopold Stokowski" was absolutely authentic.  He was registered at birth as "Leopold Anthony Stokowski" in the district of All Souls in Marylebone in 1882,  His father was Kopernick Leopold Boleslaw Stokowski, a cabinet maker, and his mother, Anne Marie Moore,  was born in Northampton.  They seem to have been Church of England. Leopold was a choirboy and, after studying at the Royal College of Music, worked as an assistant to Sir Henry Wolford Davies at the Temple Church in the City.  In 1905, he moved to the US but didn't really lose his English roots, conducting more British repertoire than one might assume. He conducted Elgar's Symphony no 2 in Cincinatti in November 1911 - just six months after its premiere in London, conducted by the composer himself.  New music, hot off the press ! He also conducted the Enigma Variations, and Holst's The Planets, also new at the time, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Walton's Belshazzar's Feast only three years after its UK premiere, when Walton still had the reputation of being avant garde.  All his liife, Stokowski was open-minded, and alert to what was interesting in musical terms, regardless of whether it was popular.   He was instrumental in bringing Charles Ives to prominence, conducting Ives's Symphony no 4, then considered unperformable, even by the composer himself.  He even arranged a nationwide broadcast . Imagine that happening on TV these days, in our supposedly enlghtened times when "intellectual" and  "creative"  are terms of abuse.  Later, his protégé, José Serebrier, recorded the piece in London, using Stokowski's principles of orchestral preparation.  Please read more HERE about the relationship between Stokowski and Serebrier, which endured until Stokowski's death. Just the account of how they met is fascinating. In many ways, Serebrier continues Stokowski's legacy, and desrevs similar respect.

At some stage, possibly under the influence of his first wife, the pianist Olga Samaroff, Stokowski adopted a "slavic" persona.  Samaroff was in fact born Lucy Hildenlooper in Texas, but in those days having an exotic background helped create careers. Whether real Russian or Polish people could see through the pretence didn't matter.  Nowadays such things would trigger counter-terrorist and money laundering systems.  By 1940, however, Stokowski was well established and able to tell the US census that he was British born, though he shaved five years off his true age.  Eventually, he moved back to Britain five years before his death aged 95. He's buried in East Finchley. 

Throughout his life, Stokowski remained interested in music that was innovative and stretched the mind.   Like so many other musicians - Debussy, Stravinsky, Benjamin Britten, Messiaen - he wa fascinated by non-western form and travelled to Asia in 1927-8.  He spoke coherently about Asian music and conducted Aaron Avshalamov's Hutungs of Beijing (1931) in 1935, presumably having met the composer.  Although the piece describes cluster housing in old Beijing, it's not a cultural hybrid but western music with oriental spice, delightful, but not authentic.  About 25 years ago recordings were made of Avshalamov's major works, which I received from a friend who was a neighbour of the composer who returned to the US in 1947.  Much more adventurously, Stokowski conducted the work of Hidemaro Konoye (1898-1973). Konoye was a bona fide Prince, a scion of the Fujiwara Clan, which goes back 1500 years and is closely associated with the Imperial Household. His brother was Prime Minister of Japan.  Konoye trained in Europe, studying with Franz Schreker, Karl Muck and Erich Kleiber. He was a friend of Wilhelm Furtwängler and Richard Strauss, he conducted the Berlin Philharmonic and founded the New Symphony Orchestra of Tokyo (now the famous NHK Symphony).  They made the first ever recording of Mahler's Symphony no 4 in 1930, one of the first to use the then new electric technology.So much for the idea that Mahler was unknown til the 1960's.  Stokowski conducted Konoye's Etenraku (1931) three times in 1935 with the Philadelphia Orchestra. What the audience and orchestra made of it, I don't know, as it is genuine gagaku music, orchestrated for western instruments. Gagaku was an aristocratic genre, heard mainly in court circles, never "populist".  But it is a fascinating piece, listen to a clip HERE, conducted not by Stokowski but by Ryusuke Numajiri. who's probably more idiomatic. Perhaps Stokowski knew Konoye who was extremely well connected. Stokowski conducted in Japan several times during Konoye's lifetime. Konoye, incidentally, was arrested and imprisoned by the US when he was leading a group of Japanese musicians back to Japan after the war, which they'd spent in Germany. Technically "enemy" though they weren't involved in atrocities.

Ikuma Dan Hiroshima Symphony - the finest Hiroshima music of all

Ikura Dan's Symphony no 6 "Hiroshima" (1985). The photo above isn't Hiroshima, or Nagasaki, but a still from the movie The Last War (世界大戦争) (Toho, 1961) about an apocalypse in a Cold War future.  Frighteningly prescient now when trolls play power games with nuclear weapons for toys.  Ikura Dan (1924-2001) was an aristocrat from a wealthy samurai family.   His forebears were part of the Zaibatsu, who created the modern Japanese economy and banking system. His grandfather was Baron Takuma Dan, boss of the Mitsui Corporation, and Prime Minister of Japan.  Born into privilege, Ikuma Dan had all the advantages that his position offered him. He had a good education, both in Japanese and international culture. Yet he lived in times of unprecedented social change. When he was six, his grandfather was assassinated by right-wing extremists.  He lived through the wars against China, though he was not a combatant.  Like many Japanese intellectuals he had an affinity for Chinese culture. He died in Suzhou.

The western media thinks almost exclusively in English-language terms, blanking out the experience of other cultures and peoples.  It's not easy to learn about non-western cultures, but try we must, for the distorted imbalance of western media blinds us, trapping us in ignorance, bigotry and war.  Ikuma Dan is a good point from which to start. Many composers -- west as well as east -- wrote music for film, in order to make a living.  In any case, in Japan, cinema was an art form almost from the beginning, creating masterpieces of poetic power.   Even Godzilla is more than schlock! (read my Godzilla and the Tsunami HERE).  Being independently wealthy, Dan didn't write much for fiml, concentrating on orchestral music -- even symphonies -- opera, ballet and chamber music.

Shrill whirring marks the start of Dan's Hiroshima Symphony. Suddenly a blast, then silence and the eerie cry of a lone woodwind instrument. Swirling, turbulent figures ascend upwards. Tense, angular figures. Fierce ostinato, interspersed with themes where staccato notes  fly in flurries.  Long, sweeping lines in the strings, reaching out as if searching, yet also smothering the other layers in the music. Yet other textures emerge. The searching lines clear to reveal the high-pitched solo woodwind, calling into space. It's intriguing. A nohkan is a flute with a high tessitura that can range over two octaves and carry across a large performing space.   Dominant chords for strings, brass and winds in more or less unison return, but the lone woodwind struggles against them. Trumpets scream strident lines, marked by the thud of timpani. The strings soar ever upwards gradually breaking from the relentless ostinato.  A harp sounds, introducing a new motif, also soaring but more subtle.  Delicate hints of lyrical melody peak out from the gloom, and the woodwind reappears, now more confident, singing its strange melody. It's much more interesting than the orchestral lines with their very western timbre, which dominates for many measures.  Significantly, the nohkan was invented in the fifteenth century, long before the modern concert orchestra.   The nohkan will not be beaten. It screams, holding legato at a very high pitch, Very dramatic and highly original.  Not concertante in the least but a battle of wits between large forces and a wayward, elusive solo instrument  played with such intensity that it holds the orchestra at bay.  A descent into ominous semi-silence.

Zingy zig-zag figures fly fiercely as the second movement, an Allegro ritmico, begins. The pace is fleet, dizzying lines giving way to oddly dance-like snippets, broken by violent staccato. Pastiche "Japonisme" stepping rhythms and crashing cymbals alternate with trumpets and heavier plodding figures, possibly meant to sound borderline vulgar.  Tempi grow faster, almost to whirlwind. Suddenly, the  nohkan breaks through, the music now properly Japanese.   Imagine  a bird singing in a wilderness, or a stream trickling in the forest around a temple.  Frenzied figures return, hurtling on in new directions.  The orchestra  swells up again, highlighted with drums, trumpets, bells and crashing percussion. Something is changing, somehow.

The Andante, marked sostenuto e funebre, is an elegy. and particularly sophisticated. From a steady opening,  the woodwind returns, but now is joined by another even more "Japanese" woodwind, a hollow-toned instrument called a shinobue, used in ttraditional folk and ritual music.  At first this sings fitfully, in broken phrases, overwhelmed by the swirling forces in the orchestra.  Soon, though, it gathers force, as if inspired by the more dominant woodwind. Together they dialogue, pushing back the "shadows" in the orchestra. The hollow-voiced woodwind now sings more than brief snatches. Its melody is like an ancient Japanese folk tune, fragile, yet strong enough to assert itself against the orchestra around it.   It seems timeless.  Now the "voice" becomes human. A soprano replicates the lines of the woodwinds.  She sings long, searching lines like the lines of the strings earlier in the symphony.  the writing for brass is interesting, too - smokey and mysterious, no longer strident.  It's as if all the elements that had gone before were being combined and renewed . A crescendo builds up, and the orchestra swells up, singing   I don't know what this means, but the effect is inspiring. Hence the photo here of doves being released before the bombed building that is the memorial at Hiroshima.  Fluttering wings symbolize the triumph of hope over hate.  Perhaps, a new, more positive dawn is emerging, and it's beautiful.

Frankly, I don't know why Penderecki's Threnody gets so much publicity.  It's fame lies in its title, but that  title is bogus and exploitative.  It wasn't written "for the victims of Hiroshima", but was dreamed up for a premiere   As music, it's also not nearly as well written as Ohki and Dan's Hiroshima symphonies, which are sincere.  (Read more sbout Ohki HERE and HERE.)  Ikuma Dan';s Hiroshima is the real thing,  written by a composer who knew from personal experience what Hiroshima meant and how it connects to Japanese history and to world humanity. So let's give Ikuma Dan the honour he deserves.

If you like this, please read about Toru Takemitsu's Requiem HERE  and about Japanese art movies about war, like The Burmese Harp  HERE and  Kobayashi's three part saga The Human Condition HERE

Chameleon woman Li Xianglan

Yoshiko Ōtaka 大鷹 淑子) died this week, aged 94, of a heart attack. Who was she, and why does it matter? Otaka was a glamour actress who starred in the film Shina no Yoru (China Nights) (1940), using her Chinese name  and identity, Li Xianglan. Nearly everyone knows the song from that film, albeit in its racist, bowdlerized version. Just as Otaka masde propaganda films for the Japanese invasion of China, she made propaganda films for the American occupation of Japan, under the name Shirley Yamaguchi.  A "Chameleon woman", because that's the way to survive in difficult times.

China Nights is so notorious in China, that its very mention still gives some people bad memories. I approached it with trepidation. Once you get over the propaganda aspects, though, it's not such a bad movie. You can see why it convinced many Japanese at the time that they were doing good for the Chinese by invading their country,, bombing and killing. Please read my analysis of the film here. "China Nights - totally politically incorect". 

In the film, Li plays a Chinese partisan who learns to realize that the Japanese are nice people who just want to civilize the Chinese. Needless to say, this didn't go down well with the Chinese. As a symbol of Japanese oppression, she was vilified. Just as she was about to be sentenced to death, it was revealed that she wasn't Chinese at all, but a Japanese who had been adopted by Chinese. So it wasn't treason by patrotism for the wrong side.  Sher moved to Japan wherte she made more movies and becamer a member of the Japanese parliament. Her life is thus a snapshot of turbulent times. A chameleon lady, who switched names, nationalities and professions (she wasn't all that good a singer either). She was a woman who survived because she had to be what the peiople around her expected her to be. Not really so different from millions of other women after all.  What is a stereotype, after all? Below, another of her famous songs, sung in Chinese, 

 

Music from Japan Barbican Takemitsu

The latest Total Immersion weekend at the Barbican Centre features Music from Japan. Or more specifically, the music of Toruy Takemitsu, Toshio Hosakawa, Jo Kondo, Dai Fujikura and other contemporary composers. This isn't "Japanese" music in a generic sense, but music created by composers who write modern music, enriched by influences from a tradition that's even older than the western.

In the film being shown on Saturday, Takemitsu is shown sitting in a garden, explaining how gardens are a metaphor for music. A garden is like an orchestra, he says, consisting of lots of different elements which a musician can arrange in whatever order seems best. You can increase the impact of some elements by massing them, or extend their colours by planting with others that complement the palette. Sometimes some elements capture the eye, such as autumn leaves, while others remain a backbone, like pines. Textures vary: sometimes the delicacy of spring blossom, sometimes the tough character of tree bark. Then, too, there are extras, maybe the sound of water trickling from a bamboo pipe, or the chirping of crickets, or wind blowing through leaves. Or even the pattern of shade thrown by a cloud in the sky. A gardener works with nature, not against it. Thus a composer works with an orchestra, extending it and encouraging it to grow, but finding his ideas organically and in balance.

Takemitsu's music exemplifies an aesthetic which combines music, philosophy and a general regard for high artistic standards in all aspects of life.

 
What's more, these composers, though modern, reach huge audiences even though their work is "new". Everyone who's seen films by Kurosawa, Mizugoshi and others has heard Takemitsu, Ifukube or Riuchi Sakamoto, so new music is absorbed naturally into audience consciousness. Indeed, movies are built around music, like Shohei Imamura's Black Rain  which is a tribute to Takemitsu's Requiem for Strings. (more about that piece and the film here)   In the west, people make a fuss about the image of classical music as "elitist". They should look to Asia, if they want insights into the future of classical music.

HERE's a link to the Barbican day. Before that, on Friday 1st there's an all-day conference co-hosted by the Institute of Musical Research and the GSMD. It includes a performance of Takemitsu's Rain Tree Sketch II with pianist Noriko Ogawa. Here's a lovely clip :

Godzilla, remembering the tsunami

It's been a year since the tsunami hit Northern Japan, followed by the emergency at Fukushima. The western news media have moved on, but for many of the Japanese involved, the trauma hasn't ended. Earlier this month, BBC2  TV ran a programme "Children of the Tsunami" (clip here). Kids are more matter of fact than adults, because they're so direct. These kids were positive and upbeat but I suspect they'd be a lot more screwed up if they didn't have good families and a supportive culture which predicates on everyone chipping in together.  One boy was so young he couldn't relate to things and became mute. It's a gradual process and full healing won't come soon. When one of the boys was asked what he'd do to reverse the disaster, he innocently said, "pick it all up and put it back in the sea where it came from". Perfectly logical if you're a kid. And presumably one who's grown up with Japanese ideas of the balance of nature.

Last year I wrote about Ishiro Honda's 1954 film Godzilla (Gojira in Japanese). Godzilla rises from the ocean and wreaks havoc on land. Everyone thinks the world is going to end. Then the scientist hears schoolchildren singing "The Prayer for Peace" and knows what he has to do. The music for the film was composed by Akira Ikufube 伊福部 昭 (1914-2006), himself a victim of radiation, but who lived to a ripe old age. Ikufube's score is evocative when you listen as music, without the film. Godziilla's main theme is poignant and beautiful, though he's a monster. When he stomps on land, and tears up electricity  pylons, the ostinato theme sounds like The Rite of Spring, only more bereft and anguished. Then, when the children sing the Prayer for Peace in a plaintive minor key, you realize it's an adaptation of the main Godzilla theme. Godzilla is much more than a monster movie, it's a parable about the power of nature, an art movie in every sense. DETAILS HERE.  Ikufube's full score is now available minus film so you can enjoy it on both levels. Also a lot of his symphonic music and non-film work. Please see lots more on Japanese film, Japanese composers and music for film on this site.

Messiaen Et Exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum Rattle Japan

Six Chernobyls at Fukushima? Worst nightmare scenario. We're all involved, not just those in Japan even if we're not affected because we are all human beings. Those helicopter pilots risking their lives to stop meltdown. Like in the movies only real. And their courage may be in vain.

Because Olivier Messiaen's Et exspecto resurrection mortuorum is about the End of the World, it's scary to listen to at this fragile time. But maybe this is, after all, the time to listen to what it really means. There is a deliberate Japanese connection, since Messiaen visited and loved Japan.  He is emphasizing universal spiritual values which apply to all, Christian or not.

Note the orchestration. No strings! The Quartet for the End of Time can be heard as a prototype. Twenty years later, and after nuclear war became a reality, Messiaen goes for maximium power. Massed percussion forms the bedrock of Et exspecto, for it represents the earth itself, ripped asunder by the Apocalypse. Specifically Messiaen uses six giant Asian gongs, more powerful than tam tams. Gongs call the faithful to order. Ritual progression is very much part of this music's structure, so gongs mark stages in its raga-like plateaux. Metallic percussion, too, rather than timpani, for dissonance. Pitched cowbells, and a gigantic set of tubular bells which ring out like an organ, the composer's personal instrument. Against the percussion,woodwinds create birdsong or the sound of wings in flight. Brasses range from small D trumpet to Wagnerian tuba. What would the Final Judgement be without trumpets?  Messiaen wants strident, not resonant.This work is, after all, about waking the dead.

The ritual character of Et exspecto is underlined by quotations from different parts of the Bible. It's a Via Crucis which unfolds in stages. First: "From the deepest abyss I cry, Lord hear me!", which is what Jesus is supposed to have called out in his time of agony. Massive dark chords like tectonic plates, shifting inexorably. The brass like the rumbling of some deep fissure, which explodes into wild, screaming chords and ends in a single, piercing shriek. Hearing this after Sendai is painful. Then silence, extremely important as it marks an invisible, inaudible transit.

In the second section, a moment of calm reassurance, for Christ has risen from the dead. Diaphanous textures, which grow into quirky, jerky angles. The movement of birds, intuitively darting in crazy angles so they can't be caught. As Messiaen the ornithologist would have understood. Birds are fragile, but they evolved from dinosaurs, and survived. Even greater stillness marks the beginning of the third section, but now the tubular bells toll, calling like the bells in a church. The woodwinds describe an even more powerful bird theme - a bird from the Amazon jungle, apparently, which has existed outside civilization. Messiaen is referring to creation itself, connecting the Beginning and End of Time. In Christian belief, an Angel blows a trumpet and graves open. Hence the darkening "earthquake fissure" theme.

Wild,  jerky figures associated with the "birds" start the fourth section, which soon  the percussion explodes. When these gongs crash,  it feels like blinding light, a shocking, flashing thunderbolt in sound. At this moment, I can't help but think of the cataclysmic light of a nuclear explosion. Ironically, it's the Resurrection, start of a new era.

The final movement almost defies description. Powerful ostinato, gongs and blocked percussion, repeated over and over, driving the point in so there's no mistaking its force. Gradually the music turns, like a juggernaut. The image of an eternal wheel, perhaps propelling the music ever forward. Messiaen uses the quotation "And I heard the voice of an immense crowd". It's an immense crowd becauase all who have died in the past have been raised from death and suffering. (That's assuming God doesn't discriminate between faiths). That's why the whole orchestra marches forth in unison. Gradually the pace builds up to an overwhelming climax. It's not a march in conventional symphonic terms but owes its structure, perhaps, to Japanese gagaku, which inspired Messiaen's ground-breaking Sept Haïkaï, written in 1962, soon after Messaien returned from Japan, and two years before Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum.

In Sept Haïkaï,  the image is a “floating gate”, the torii at the Miyajima shrine in Japan. The red arches stand alone in the sea, as if suspended between earth and sky. It is a gate, but to what? The arches stand amid a panoramic open  landscape. As the weather changes, as time changes, the surroundings change dramatically. Photo by H Orihashi. Read more about Sept Haïkaï HERE.

Every time we listen to a piece of music, we're influenced by what's in our lives at the time. All performances are different and most have some insight to offer. I don't think at the moment I could have coped with Myung-Whun Chung's geological version at the Proms in 2008, it's just too graphic. There's a very good Simon Rattle performance available on BBC Radio 3 at the moment, recorded at his recent concert at the Barbican with the LSO. With the Berliner Philharmoniker in Berlin recently he did a marvellously vigorous Mahler 3, which really brought out the mountains and what they mean,, so he could perhaps do Et Exspecto with a similar granitey monumentalism. But I'm glad that he took a more esoteric approach this time, which connects better to the spiritual meaning of the piece. For sure, the spiritual message meant much more to Messaien than the graphics. The all-time best recording remains Pierre Boulez - unsurpassed for its balance of grace and intensity.

For Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum means "In expectation of the resurrection of the dead". It's not meant to be oppressive or gloomy. It was commissioned as a memorial to the French war dead, but Messiaen was  having no truck with militarism or even national glory. Instead he comes up with something so unique and so universal he wanted it performed in the Alps,. So if the Christian form of this piece bothers you, remember that for Messaien, God resided in Nature, and mountains were Nature's cathedrals. So Rattle's Et Exspecto comes at just the right moment, when we need to think about the unprecedented series of disasters facing the people of Japan. While foreigners scramble to leave, a million ordinary Japanese are still out there in the open, without food, water or shelter. They've already lost everything and can't escape.

Oedipus Rex in prehistoric Japan.

Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex is so dramatic it hardly needs staging. Stravinsky wanted the text in Latin, deliberately distancing the text from listeners, to further strengthen the idea of ancient, impenetrable mystery. So a story of ancient Greece, written first in French by Jean Cocteau and back-translated into Latin. Setting this performance in Japanese pre-history extends the idea that this saga is universal.

While most Japanese are familiar with western history, western audiences have little idea at all about other cultures. The Jomon period in Japan lasted from around 14000 BCE til around the time of the Romans in Europe. Relatively little is known about the period, even though it lasted so long, so this DVD, from the Saito Kinen Festival in 1992, is worth watching for this very reason alone.

The cast is superb - Jessye Norman, Philip Langridge, Bryn Terfel, and Seiji Osawa conducts the Saito Kinen Orchestra, who are much underrated. They deserved being in that arbitrary Gramophone magazine list of "best orchestras".

The principals perform inside huge costumes, with enormous false arms and hands, operated inside the voluminous garments. Above their heads tower symbolic heads, with eyeless sockets. It sounds odd, but works well in practice since the principals are larger than life and move with ponderous dignity.

Imagine Jessye Norman at her imperious peak in gleaming white, massive hands crossed against her chest, metal spikes sticking out several feet from her headress. When this Jocasta intones "Do not trust oracles!" she means it. She's overwhelmingly powerful, her voice magnificent. Philip Langridge sings a very good Oedipus, from inside another contraption of a costume. The dancers seem to have stepped right out of an archaeological site. They move with formal. angular gestures. Again, the faces are opaque, hidden by masks that reveal nothing. The effect is a kind of primitive, ritual power. This film, by Julie Taymor, makes Oedipus Rex feel like The Rite of Spring.

The choruses move like a frieze of pottery figures, but each singer is defined individually. The set (by George Tsypin) itself uses many ideas from Jomon art - perpendiculars and flat planes "knitted" with rope and cord. Most striking of all, though, is the narrator, Kayoko Shiraishi. She's dressed in a simple grey kimono but her delivery is so powerful that she almost eclipses Norman's Jocasta. Even though she's speaking Japanese, there's no mistaking the savage ferocity of what she's saying. Japanese audiences will get this Oedipus Rex readily enough. Western audiences should try. Even if they don't, that's OK as the staging is abstract enough to appreciate on its oiwn terms. Interesting detail - this was co produced by Peter Gelb, now at the Met.

French and Japanese Prom 10 2009 Debussy Takemitsu

“If we listen without European prejudice to the charm of their percussion”, said Claude Debussy of his first exposure to gamelan in 1889, “We must confess that our percussion is like primitive noises at a country fair”

Without Japan, we wouldn't have much of what we now take for granted as "western culture". When Japan burst into Europe in the 19^th century, it opened up a new world of exotic possibilities, parallel to the influence of the New World and Asia on the baroque era. No wonder Monet and the Impressionists were so fascinated. Japan primed the west for “other worlds” like Asia, the Middle East, Africa. Orientalism remains a powerful thread in French literature, art and music, which the insular Anglophile world doesn’t appreciate. The significance of this Prom was lost on the small audience. Perhaps people were scared off by “foreign” music, not realizing that Bizet, Ravel and Debussy were inspired by strange new sounds in the first place.

In turn, Debussy inspired Tōru Takemitsu. Takemitsu was fascinated by the way Debussy used washes of orchestral sound, “impressionism” as music. He recognized that Japanese instruments could extend the palette of western orchestras, providing extra colours and richness.

Takemitsu builds his music around the shō. The shō is a bundle of 17 pipes, each with a copper reed. Because a performer can inhale and exhale while playing, the instrument can produce extremely long, seamless legato, far beyond the range of conventional mouth blown instruments. Moreover, each pipe is a different length and each reed vibrates freely within the pipe, allowing subtle gradations of nuance within the line.

Mayumi Miyata demonstrated just how powerful the shō can be. She created sounds that rose out of stillness, rising in keening arcs of sound that seemed to vibrate across the massive space that is the Royal Albert Hall. The shō’s call is met by three pairs of flautists (soprano and bass), positioned round the perimeter. Takemitsu shows that this tiny instrument can match the massive multiple pipes of the Royal Albert Hall organ in dramatic use of sound and space.

Hearing Debussy’s Estampes – Pagodes right after Takemitsu made me appreciate how well Debussy understood non-western idioms. He used pentatonic chords, but also intuited that Asian music develops, not by thematic progression but by changes of tempo and direction.

Maurice Ravel didn’t use Asian motifs in Rapsodie espagnole, but his concept was similar: to borrow from traditions outside conventional orchestral forms to create new music. Instead of five note tones, he uses a scale of four, adding jerky, angular rhythms of Spanish dance. This piece is so familiar now that we forget how startling it must have seemed in 1907. Similarly, Tzigane, with its “barbaric” wildness of Spanish gypsy, so alien to mainstream, middle class western Europe. This is the sound world of modernism, much in the way that Picasso and Braque embraced angular shapes and blocks of bold colour. Similarly, the Tzigane explores the sounds of gypsy music, more savage and “primitive!" than was the norm in mainstream, middle-class Europe at the time.

The Orchestre National de Lyon (ONL) is extremely good indeed, on a par with Orchestre de Paris and Ensemble Intercontemporain. Under Jun Märkl, they’ve built upon their reputation for energy, so these performances were executed with whip cracking precision and clarity. The strings move as a disciplined unit, so when the leader, Jennifer Gilbert, takes her solos, she sounds all the more thrilling and free.

Nonetheless, Akiko Suwanai, the violin soloist, was outstanding. She has such technical command that she can unleash dizzying displays of bravura, but deeply felt and natural. In Sarasate’s Concert Fantasy on Themes from Carmen, it’s as if Carmen’s personality comes alive, without the need for words. Glissandi “speak”. Imploringly, sharp bursts of staccato crack like boots are stamping in some defiant dance. The “Lilas Pastia” section evokes a gentler mood, Suwanai’s deeper timbre supported by double-bass murmuring.

Suwanai is amazing, very individual. Last year, she played RVW's Lark Ascending at the Proms. It sounded ethereallly beautiful, as if played on a Chinese erhu. See HERE Confirms my theory that British music takes on new life with non-British performers who don't carry years of baggage.

In Toshio Hosokawa’s Cloud and Light (2008) Mayumi Miyata’s shō also functioned as a voice. Where Takemitsu orchestrated around the unornamented shō, Hosokawa integrates it more closely with the ensemble. The title refers to Buddhist paintings where Buddha floats on clouds, light streaming from his halo. The clouds form dense circles, wisps stretching outwards like flames. Hence the dignified traverse of the piece, the shō emerging from a mist of muffled strings, which echo its serene lines.

Miyata holds one legato for what seems like 25 bars. It’s so quiet, so elusive that the sound seems to emanate from vibrations rather than register in the ears. The programme notes (Paul Griffiths) mention Messiaen’s Sept Haïkaï, which was inspired by Gagaku. While listening, though, I thought of the rapturous progressions of Vingt Régards sur L’Enfant-Jésus. In Messiaen as in Hosokawa, it is the sense of timeless movement that comes across most strongly. Towards the end, sounds seem to disintegrate in tiny, fragmented bell tones, wafting into infinity. please see HERE It's one of the most revolutionary pieces because it operates on three levels, each unit functioning separately and at different intervals. The picture on that posts shows a torii, an arch which seems to float suspended between sea and sky, changing with light and time.

In any ordinary Prom, Debussy’s La Mer would have had pride of place. Quite likely, the Orchestre National de Lyon would have produced a stunning performance. But the rest of the concert was so unusual, and so eclectic, that for once, it didn’t matter quite so much that Debussy’s masterpiece didn’t take centre stage. See full review HERE Read about Haitink conducting La Mer a few weeks ago HERE

Please also see what I've written about baroque in Europe, Japanese and Chinese baroque and cultural fusion. Labels on right, under "Macau" and "baroque". And of course, I can’t resist having fun. Here’s Ge Lan (Grace Chang) singing Carmen in Mandarin. She also does Rigoletto, Puccini, lots more. The film is wonderful, she has such panache and wit.

Aimard Boulez Messiaen centenary Sept Haïkaï London

This centenary tribute to Oliver Messiaen began with the Ensemble Intercontemporain. On the very anniversary of the composer’s birth, they were joined by their founder, Pierre Boulez, and Pierre-Laurent Aimard, both long term Messiaen champions. Since so many others associated with Messiaen were in the audience it felt like a family celebration. Yet, even in this year of extremely good performances, this concert stood out as exceptional. Obviously, the performance was superb, but even more interesting was that it proved just how visionary Messiaen was and how powerful his influence was.

Couleurs de la cité céleste refers to the biblical prophecy in which a shining palace appears in the heavens after the apocalypse. It’s made of jewels and glows with light, a powerful symbol of the goal of all creation. Bear the image in mind, for it epitomizes everything Messiaen believed in. This performance blazed with Messiaen’s sharp, lucid colours, but even more significantly, Boulez showed the firm foundations of its glory. The piece is tightly constructed, its structure itself reaffirming the ideas behind the vision. Like Buddhist mandalas and Sanskrit wheels, the symmetry in this piece suggests eternity. Messiaen himself said “The work does not end, but turns upon itself …like the rose window of a cathedral”. Like a living organism, the music continues to grow, even after it seems to have ended. Anyone familiar with Boulez’s own work will appreciate the importance of this concept.

Even more revolutionary is Sept Haïkaï, another Boulez favourite. This time the image is “floating gate”, the torii at the Miyajima shrine in Japan, which Messiaen visited in 1962. Ponder the image as it’s central to so much in this music and in Messiaen’s overall beliefs. The red arches stand alone in the sea, as if suspended between earth and sky. It is a gate, but to what ? That is the mystery of creation, as relevant to Messiaen as to Japanese spirituality. The arches stand amid a panoramic landscape. As the weather changes, as time changes, the surroundings change dramatically. It’s an almost miraculous metaphor for how Messiaen’s music works.

Even though it was written nearly 50 years ago, Sept Haïkaï is still a difficult work to penetrate. Those accustomed to thinking of Messiaen only in terms of birdsong, liturgy and colour have to “hear” in a completely different mode. Structurally it’s based on cells of instruments operating separately and simultaneously. Japanese gagaku music has been described as “a mosaic of melody, rhythm and harmony”, co-ordinated rather than fused, as in western music. Although the references are to Japanese music, the waving, pulsing rhythms derive from Indian talas. Conceptually, this is unusual, too. It’s not “wallpaper music”, but benefits from being listened to with a mix of rapt attention and liberating openness. Meditation as music ! Again, this is the essence of Messaien. The music comes to a sudden halt, but as with Couleurs de la cité céleste does it really end ?

Hearing Boulez’s Sur Incises in this context showed just how far reaching Messiaen’s ideas really are. Boulez’s masterpiece may sound nothing like Messiaen, but here is the same understanding of structure as a kind of exoskeleton, allowing profuse sound forms to flourish other than in conventional symphonic development. Boulez bases the piece on three “islands”, three pianos, three harps, three banks of percussion. Just as in Sept Haïkaï, the music grows on several different levels at the same time, intersecting, weaving rather than fusing, each individual element distinct.

Much has been made of the steel drums, for Boulez hears them as marimba writ large, drawing subtle sonorities from what is ostensibly a simple instrument. Pierre-Laurent Aimard ceded the piano part in Couleurs to Sébastien Vichard, pianist of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, a position Aimard was appointed to at the age of 19 by Boulez, for the cadenzas in this piece are so intricate they demand total concentration. Often those who don’t know Boulez assume he must be cold because he’s logical and precise. But Sur Incises reveals passionate intensity of quite another order. Like Messiaen, this is music as “living organism” growing and unfurling.

Photo by H. Orihashi

Music about war : Hiroshima Symphony - Ohki

Today is the anniversary of Hiroshima but what has the world learned ? Just look at the news......There is of course the much underrated Hiroshima Symphony by Masao Ohk.. To read about Ikuma Dan's Hiroshima Symphony, click HERE.  We take Hiroshima for granted but in 1952 Japan was still under military occupation and Japanese people weren't allowed official news of the bombing. News leaked out as small horrible hints : people who knew people who knew first hand. And the Japanese were still reeling from the shock of defeat, total carpet bombing, firestorms in cities of wooden houses.

Ohki's Hiroshima Symphony is carefully constructed, as if "boxes within boxes" can make sense of the chaos. The Prelude starts with unsettling calm, tense cello and bass pizzicatos gradually adding a sense of time ticking away urgently. Ohki is too subtle to "depict" the actual impact. Instead, the second part is a meditation in the lowest registers of winds and strings, a solo trumpet adding a sort of cry of anguished disbelief. He titles it Ghosts – it was a procession of ghosts, referring to the images of survivors and wounded walking silently and mindlessly through the flattened landscape. Suddenly driving strings introduce the next section, where at last percussion and brass surge powerfully. Ohki’s mental picture was of waves of fire, expressed by rapid chromatic runs and trills, tremolos and glissandos. This is also the imagery of wind, and transformation for in those moments, Japanese life was changed forever. Another darkly meditative section develops the themes in Ghosts, before the strange and disturbing fifth section, Rainbow. Ohki quotes a description of the time, when "All of a sudden black rain poured over them and then appeared a beautiful rainbow". A plaintive solo violin, then a solo clarinet evoke the unworldly half light. Ohki isn’t depicting the rainbow as such, but perhaps the survivors inchoate response to it, which is far more complex.
 
The seventh section is Atomic desert: boundless desert with skulls. Against a background of "flat-lining" strings, keening and wailing, the disembodied sounds of flute, piccolo and clarinet rise tentatively. It’s a bizarrely abstract piece, strikingly modern, particularly when considering how Ohki had been cut off from western mainstream music for a good fifteen years since the Japanese regime, allied to the Nazis, suppressed "modern" music. The final movement, Elegy, draws in themes from the earlier sections, yet also develops them with deeper emphasis. As Morihide Katayama writes in the booklet of the CD (Naxos) notes: "the conflict is unresolved, and whether the terror is broken down or not depends on subsequent human conscience".

The composer wasn’t to know, in 1953, that survivors would suffer illnesses even into subsequent generations, or that bigger and deadlier bombs would be developed within years. As we face a world still fond of sabre-rattling and leaders who haven’t learned, the message of Hiroshima is, if anything, even more important. This is a deeply felt symphony, all the more moving because of its objectivity and universal qualities. It should take its place in the repertoire of music written in response to war and its devastation. "History repeats itself for those who don’t listen".

Please also follow the labels on the right of this blog, because there is a LOT more about Hiroshima, music about war, anti war issues, China, Japan, agit prop films, Henze, Zimmermann, Eisler and history. READ about the man who survived both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and what he wants the world to know. Also, for 2010 I have written about Masako Koybayashis The Human Condition, an epic film about a Japanese in Manchuria and how he keeps faith in being human, despite all odds. And also BLACK RAIN,  (Kuroi Ame) a film based on a novel by a Hiroshima resident, with soundtrack based on Toru Takemitsu's Requiem for Strings.