Search - Qunihico Hashimoto, Ryusuke Numajiri, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra :: Hashimoto: Symphony No. 1 in D; Heavenly Maiden and Fisherman

Pleasant Europeanized Japanese Music

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 10/06/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Qunihico Hashimoto (1904-1949) was among the first musicians in Japan to compose in a Western style. He was, at least early in his career, essentially self-taught; there were really no teachers of composition in Japan when he was coming of age. He himself later became a composition teacher and was the teacher of Akio Yashiro, whose music on a Naxos CD I earlier reviewed with a good deal of praise. In the mid-1930s he went to Europe and studied with avant garde composer Egon Wellesz and 'associated with' such cutting edge men as Alois Hába (of quarter-tone music fame) and Ernst Krenek. The music on this disc would never lead you to guess this. It is unabashedly tonal. The longest piece here, the Symphony, runs 46:25. It was composed to commemorate the 2600th anniversary of the founding of the Japanese Empire; the powers that be got that wrong--it was really about the 1600th anniversary--but that's another story. Hashimoto, who was composing fairly forward-looking work at the time, geared back at the government's demand and wrote a symphony that was not only tonal, but even, to borrow a term used at about the same time in the Soviet Union, 'proletarian': easily understood by the masses. Consequently, the materials in the symphony borrow heavily from folk songs and dances and its construction is of the simplest and most easily understood sort. Indeed, there is one motto, D up to E down to A, that is repeated innumerable times throughout the piece, usually with a harmonic underpinning of I-V-I; this gets pretty boring after a while. However, there are stunning orchestration and some charming pastoral and martial effects in the first and second movements. The third and last movement is a set of variations based on a theme that includes D-E-A again. The variations themselves are rather pedestrian but they do lead to a fairly interesting fugue as culmination of the movement and of the symphony as a whole.Seen in historical perspective this symphony is surely an important landmark in Western composition in Japan. But standing on its own, it is hardly to be classed even with second-rate late 19th century products of Europe itself. And nothing in the piece would have been foreign to a listener from that era.The more engaging filler on this disc is a 20-minute suite from a ballet, 'Heavenly Maiden and the Fisherman,' written before Hashimoto left Japan for his studies in Europe. Written in an attractive mostly impressionistic style, one assumes Hashimoto was freer to express himself in this music, absent the straitjacket of governmental strictures. The music depicts the story of a fisherman who finds a magic robe that allows its wearer to fly and which belongs to the Heavenly Maiden. She implores him to give it back, and moved by her plea, he returns it and she ascends back into heaven. Aside from the use of pentatonic motifs and some Japanese sounding drumming this music sounds for all the world like that coming from France perhaps a decade or two earlier; one thinks of Dukas's 'La Peri' or Koechlin's 'Sur les flots lointains.' Interesting, attractive stuff.The splendid Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra is well-led by conductor Ryusuke Numajiri, a name new to me. I understand that James DePreist, the long-time conductor of the Oregon Symphony who has recorded some wonderful things over the years (Tsontakis and Lees, among others) has just taken up his post as their new Permanent Conductor. Now, I'd like to hear some of Hashimoto's more advanced music. How about it Naxos?TT=67:03Scott Morrison"

Beautiful and Breathtaking!

gmstudio01 | Shaker Heights, Ohio United States | 10/05/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This disc is absolutely stunning. The opening movement of this symphony had me hooked right from the start. This is very accessible "western" sounding music, ironic considering the highly politically-charged (Anti-American) Japanese regime for whom it was composed. (In 1940!) The very detailed liner notes hint at a rather extensive Hashimoto catalog, and I can only hope that Naxos plans on releasing MUCH more by this very exciting composer. I purchased 6 CDs the day I bought this one, but this disc was the first I put in my player and it hasn't left it since. (The other 5 are still in the shrinkwrap!) PLEASE bring us more Hashimoto, Naxos!"

Introducing Qunihico Hashimoto, a Kind of Japanese Kodaly

M. C. Passarella | Lawrenceville, GA | 12/07/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I was truly impressed with the Naxos CD of music by Hisato Ohzawa. He assimilated the influences of a number of important early modern composers such as Myaskovsky, Roussel, and Prokofiev but managed to make them his own. One can say the same for Qunihico Hasimoto, though his influences are late Romantic and Impressionist--this despite the fact that he studied with Egon Wellesz, himself a student of Schoenberg. In the West, Hasimoto mostly hung out with composers from the Second Viennese School, admiring Berg's music especially. But when he returned to Japan, he realized that in order to make his mark as a composer he had to cultivate a more conservative style. This is a lesson, by the way, that the unfortunate Ohzawa didn't learn, and he had a much harder row to hoe in his traditionalist country. Ohzawa--at least on the evidence of the music in Naxos's Japanese Classics series--is the more individualistic and interesting composer. But Hasimoto has his strengths as well, the most obvious being his Kodaly-like ability to turn traditional melody into richly orchestrated Western classical music.



His Symphony No. 1, written to celebrate the 2600th year of the Japanese emperor in 1940, is a case in point, as Morihide Katayama explains in his very detailed notes to the recording. The last movement is a series of variations on Kigensetsu, "virtually a second national anthem" for the Japanese, while the second movement is a stately dance based on pentatonic music from the south of Japan. And a three-note motif that ties the work together recalls Gagaku, Japanese music of the court. Of the three movements, the second is the simplest in structure and much the best. In A-B-A form, it has a spunky scherzando middle section recalling the traditional folk music Westerners are used to hearing piped into their favorite Japanese restaurant. The A section is that stately dance cited above, and like Ravel in Bolero, Hasimoto is content to repeat his melody over and over again, dressing it in ever-richer orchestral garb until the climax, to the beat of the Nihon-Daiko, a Japanese bass drum. The upshot is a hypnotic bit of proto-minimalism.



The symphonic suite drawn from Hasimoto's ballet "Heavenly Maiden" is also nice to hear, reminding me in spots of Busoni's Turandot music. I wonder if Hasimoto was familiar with it. Overall, this is a more Impressionistic work than the Symphony, closer in sound and spirit to Ravel and Debussy than to the German late Romantics who hover over the Symphony's sonata-form gestures. The best bit here is the "Fisherman's Solo Dance," which has the same hypnotic repetitiveness of the Symphony's second movement. The only problem is that Hasimoto seems to have ripped off Rimsky-Korsakov's wonderful "Christmas Eve Suite." Oh, well, if you're going to steal something from another composer, you could certainly do worse! Great music this is not, but deft orchestration and attractive tunes (whether Hasimoto's or Rimsky's) make it a very listenable affair.



The performances are most sympathetic, the Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra sounding like a very capable group of musicians. They don't need to fret about being Tokyo's "other" orchestra if they typically play as they do on this disc. The recording, thanks to legendary sound engineer Tony Faulkner, is first-rate. So this is not the most compelling entry in Naxos's excellent Japanese Classics series, but it is a worthwhile one nonetheless.

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