Yamada was a pioneer
in the Japanese acceptance of Western
music. Conductor, composer and proselytiser
he travelled far and achieved a great
deal in his musical life. His father
was a samurai, his mother a Protestant
and he grew up to the sounds of the
harmonium, an interest cemented by his
sister’s English husband, an amateur
musician who encouraged him - not least
financially. In 1904 he entered the
Tokyo Music School to study voice –
there was as yet no composition class
– but did mix with some solidly trained
German musicians, imported to raise
the level of technical competence. One
was August Junker, a Joachim pupil,
and another Heinrich Werkmeister who
had arrived from the Berlin Musikhochschule.
It was via Werkmeister’s Japanese pupil,
the cellist Koyata Iwasaki that Yamada
was to make his way to Berlin where
he studied with Max Bruch from 1910
and subsequently with Karl Leopold Wolf.
Yamada was the first
Japanese composer to write in symphonic
and orchestral form. We have four examples
of his work here and they are split
down the middle; the Overture and Symphony
adhere strictly to academic German models
and the symphonic poems exude his excitement
at having discovered French impressionism.
The Overture has a pleasant fresh air
chromaticism and is very competently
orchestrated. It constitutes the first
Japanese orchestral work (completed
in March 1912). The Symphony is a biggish
36-minute work in four movements. The
notes speak of his indebtedness to familiar
models; Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert,
Mendelssohn, Brahms and Dvořák.
Well, maybe so but I don’t hear all
of them. This is a work rooted in the
mid-nineteenth century tradition – some
Schumann and rigorous working out; no
Brahms that I can hear. It opens with
the second strain of the Japanese National
Anthem, promisingly, but the
effect is momentary because the second
theme is entirely Germanic, neatly worked
out and of no enormous depth. The slow
movement is said to be Beethovenian
but it’s actually rather attractively
bland and the Scherzo has two trio sections,
both very well orchestrated and lively.
There are some fine string colours in
the allegro section of the finale, plenty
of energy too, but the overall effect,
as must have been inevitable given the
circumstances of its composition, is
of a well-crafted treatise not a symphonic
statement.
More interesting by
far are the two symphonic poems. They
both date from 1913. The Dark Gate is
based on a symbolist poem by the Japanese
poet Rofu Miki. It opens deceptively,
with diatonic calm bust soon erupts
in ferment, reflecting the ghoulish
drama of the poem, the percussion drum
rolls only too explicitly reflecting
the Knocking Door motif that courses
through the poem. Madara No Hana, once
again based on a literary Japanese text,
employs a big late Romantic orchestra
but starts with some fine impressionist
writing. The oscillating figures and
incremental tension generated reach
their zenith in a powerfully controlled
outburst. Both these tone poems take
death as their subject matter and handle
the orchestra with a degree of panache.
It was after the First
World War that Yamada travelled to America
to conduct his music in New York. In
1921 he was to write his Inno Meiji
Symphony in which a western orchestra
sported Japanese solo instruments. And
he was to become one of the most important
figures in Japanese musical life. These
early works show him either following
prescribed academic formalism (the Overture
and the Symphony) or exploring the colouristic
and emotive potential implicit in impressionism.
It’s the latter path that most clearly
appeals even though it remained only
imperfectly absorbed at this early stage.
The fine performers make out a case
for them and for an under-explored area
of musical engagement.
Jonathan Woolf
see also review
by Colin Clarke
Ulster Orchestra 