The
Naxos label began, literally and figuratively, as a marriage
between East
and West. German businessman Klaus Heymann found himself in
Hong Kong starting a classical music recording label. One
of its first successes was the recording of “The Butterfly
Lovers Concerto,” a work in a Western classical genre composed
by Shanghai music students Chen Gang and He Zhanhao. Heymann’s
wife, Takako Nishizaki, was the soloist. More recently, Naxos
has embarked on series of both Japanese and Chinese classical
music.
It can be hard
to keep up with everything Naxos is doing. It is easy, especially,
for composers so completely unknown, at least in the West,
to escape notice of a Western listener and reviewer. We should,
however, take notice of Humiwo Hayasaka. He had a short life,
dying at age 41 from a long bout of tuberculosis. In his short
life he fought numerous obstacles in order to maintain his
passionate drive to compose music. Hayasaka had to leave school
at age 16 in order to support his siblings after his father’s
departure and mother’s death. Yet he maintained contact with
the young musicians and ideas, as if missing out on conservatory
training were a minor hindrance. He sought to combine new
trends from the West — the work of Debussy, Ravel, Satie, and
Stravinsky foremost — with ancient Japanese forms and scales,
and even a strong dose of Gregorian chant. Like Malcolm Arnold,
he earned his living — in Hayasaka’s case, for most of his
adult life — by writing film music. While working for the
nascent Japanese industry, he — again, like the Brit — still
prolifically composed concert music.
Hayasaka’s Piano
Concerto is, quite simply, a great work in late Romantic style. Though
influence by Ravel’s Concerto for Left Hand, its bravura style
and lush, dark orchestration are redolent of Tchaikovsky and
Rachmaninov. It is a work fully qualified to stand shoulder-to-shoulder
in such august company. The first movement is somber, serving
as a requiem for the composer’s dead brother and more generally
as an elegy for the values of the past. The second movement,
however, launches into rollicking dancing. According to the
composer, “I intended to combine modern mobility with the innocent
epicurean character of Oriental people, a little different
from Occidental humour.” The result is a virtuosic perpetuum
mobile.
Pianist Hiromi
Okada is as new to me as the composer. The notes indicate
that he is the leading exponent of contemporary Japanese piano
music. It is easy to hear why. He has the strength and speed
that virtuosity demands, while maintaining a clear shape to
the work’s architecture and properly inflecting (but not overinflecting)
each phrase. Yablonsky and the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra
might seem unlikely companions, and perhaps Oriental, as opposed
to Occidental, forces would more strongly articulate the specifically
Japanese features that Hayasaka put into the work.
The Ancient
Dances on the Left and on the Right - named after a traditional
Japanese dance integrating many forms of Asian music - sounds
a bit like the short orchestral or film music of Shostakovich;
they even have occasional Orientalisms in common. Hayasaka
sees this as a concert work, though, so it maintains a coherency
of drama and musical story that can elude the Russian’s more
populist works. The Overture in D is a fine example
of its genre, an insistent, rousing piece that could have
come from the pen of Khatchaturian. The composer claimed
that “this is an attempt at bolero form.” While there is
no sense of the Spanish, there is a similar sense of relentless
drive to the end.
This is a disc
that I expect to return to often. Those interested in a great
late-Romantic-sounding piano concerto, and a couple of very
good orchestral pieces on the side, should get this. I hope
Naxos records more Hayasaka. I also hope that some adventurous
programmer will consider getting this audience-friendly music
into the world’s concert halls.
Brian Burtt
see also review by Rob Barnett
Hiromi Okada
(piano) 
for
details
