YAMADA: Symphony in F Major, Triumph and Peace

Album review

In 1912, a 26-year-old music student from the provinces attending the Musikhochschule in Berlin turned out a well-composed and very conventional overture and four-movement symphony for his theory class. In 1913, the same student wrote two very progressive, very expressive, and very mystical symphonic poems for himself and a handful of like-minded friends. Not, one would imagine, a singular story in the heady days and decadent nights of fin de siècle Berlin except that in this case the province in question was Japan, the composer in question was named Kosaku Yamada, and the works are the first overture, the first symphony, and the first symphonic poems ever composed by someone of Japanese descent.
That Yamada's Overture and Symphony are conventional and inconsequential works is hardly surprising: after all, he composed them for class. And that Yamada's The Dark Circle and Madara No Hana are progressive and expressive works is hardly surprising: after all, he wrote them for himself. But that symphonic poems should be so weirdly radiant; so luminously colored; so achingly, longingly, yearningly mystical is certainly surprising and that they should be so convincing and even compelling is astounding. Yamada's Madara No Hana, the flowers in Buddhist Heaven, is an exquisitely beautiful work of serene ecstasy. The conducting of Takuo Yuasa is lucid, the playing of the Ulster Orchestra and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra is clean, the recording of Naxos is clear, and the uncanny light of Yamada's Madara No Hana shines through.

© TiVo