Mizuno: Symphony Nos. 3 & 4

Chronique

The two symphonies by Shuko Mizuno on this Camerata release may remind listeners of several modernists, but they will also suggest western popular music, particularly musical theater -- such are the influences that stimulate this Japanese composer's imagination. Mizuno's rich harmonies in the Symphony No. 4 seem to be derived unabashedly from Olivier Messiaen's music, and the piece almost stays in this lush, meditative mood until the brash Broadway rhythms of the Finale bring the reveries to an abrupt halt. The Symphony No. 3, with its brooding counterpoint and cataclysmic climaxes, is perhaps most reminiscent of Shostakovich and Penderecki, though here, too, Mizuno exploits musical theater in the third movement, to a rather noisy conclusion. Whether this blatantly post-modern approach has any appeal depends on the listener's taste, but Mizuno's skill in composition and orchestration cannot be denied. However, his ideas about symphonic form are open to question. Aside from his preoccupations with styles and instrumental brilliance, which show him to be a clever mimic and an entertaining showman, Mizuno does little to qualify these pieces as proper symphonies with real thematic developments and trajectories, and instead passes off suites of pastiches as symphonies, with little concern for their coherence or form. So this music may dazzle on a first hearing, but it has little depth or subtlety and is unlikely to reward repeated listening. The playing by the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra under Kazufumi Yamashita is first-rate, and the sound of these live recordings is vivid and clear.

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