TMSO Special 2021 (2/20)

This concert is over. Date: Sat. 20. February 2021 18:00 (17:00)

Venue: Suntory Hall Venue Info Seat

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Artists

Kazushi ONO, Conductor
Eri NAKAMURA, Soprano**
Mihoko FUJIMURA, Mezzo-Soprano*
New National Theatre Chorus, Male Chorus*

Profile

Kazushi ONO (Music Director)

Kazushi Ono is the definitive musical citizen of the world, having been born in Tokyo, studied in Munich and forged his early career in Zagreb, Karlsruhe and Tokyo. This variety of influences has shaped an inquiring and profound musical intellect and an ability to communicate meaning across languages and cultures, leading to longstanding relationships around the world.
Ono trained in Europe under Wolfgang Sawallisch and came to public attention winning first prize in the 1987 Toscanini Competition. Since his first appointment at Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra in 1992 he has held continuous positions, including at Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra, Karlsruhe Opera, La Monnaie, Opéra National de Lyon, Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, and currently, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, New National Theatre Tokyo and Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra.
A favourite of orchestral players, he has lasting friendships with orchestras around the world and regularly guest conducts groups such as London Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.
His passion and curiosity for repertoire takes him in different directions – to the standard classics but also to new music. He often commissions works and has collaborated several times with Mark-Anthony Turnage, including on Silent Cities, Hibiki (which won a Royal Philharmonic Society award) and Time Flies, which was originally commissioned for the 2020 Tokyo Olympiad. Recent commissions at NNTT include Asters by Akira Nishimura and Dai Fujikura’s A Dream of Armageddon. His programming there also includes Baroque, 20th-century and bel canto masterpieces.
In Europe he conducted the world premieres of Toshio Hosokawa’s Hanjyo in Aix-en-Provence, Arnulf Hermann’s Der Mieter at Oper Frankfurt and Kaija Saariaho’s Emilie at Opéra de Lyon, as well as new productions of Ravel’s L’heure espagnole and L’Enfant et les sortilèges at Glyndebourne and Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au Bûcher at Opéra de Lyon. He has worked closely with boundary-breaking directors such as Dmitri Tcherniakov, Romeo Castellucci, Pierre Audi, William Kentridge and Mariusz Treliński
Ono is a vocal advocate for the role of culture in all our lives. During his time in Lyon he took part in a programme bringing opera to prisons and at TMSO he leads the inclusive SaLaD Music Festival, as well as working with community organisations for people with disabilities. In his new role in Brussels he will be part of an integration scheme for refugees. During the initial stages of the pandemic, he led ground-breaking research into the transmission of particles and the use of ventilation that meant that orchestras could get back to playing for audiences safely.
In 2017 he was awarded ‘Officier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres’ by French cultural minister Françoise Nyssen, adding to the prestigious Asahi Prize in January 2015, for his contribution to the development and progress of Japanese society.
https://www.kazushiono.com/

Eri NAKAMURA (Soprano)

Eri Nakamura is an alumna of Osaka College of Music and Opera Studio at New National Theatre, Tokyo. She made her debut at Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 2008. Between 2010-2016, Nakamura was a member of ensemble at Bayerische Staatsoper. She has appeared at opera houses such as Washington National Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, and Salzburger Landestheater. She made her debut at Wiener Staatsoper in 2016.

Mihoko FUJIMURA (Mezzo-soprano)

Mihoko Fujimura is one of the most soughtafter singers performing internationally. She was the first Japanese singer, singing a major role, to debut at the prestigious Bayreuth Festival. She returned to the festival for nine consecutive years, earning acclaim as a rare talent over two decades in the world of Wagner music. Since then, she has appeared in world famous opera houses including Staatsoper Wien. She also has performed with distinguished conductors including Claudio Abbado, Zubin Mehta and leading orchestras such as the Vienna Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic.

In Japan, Mihoko Fujimura made her debut at the New National Theatre Tokyo singing Fricka in Der Ring des Nibelungen. Her solo performance for Beethoven’s ninth symphony with the NHK Symphony Orchestra, as well as her numerous opera performances and recitals, have been highly acclaimed. www.MihokoFujimura.com

photo©R&G Photography

New National Theatre Chorus (Chorus)

New National Theatre, Tokyo, opened in October 1997 as the only national theatre for the modern performing arts of Opera, Ballet, Contemporary Dance and Play. Meanwhile, New National Theatre Chorus started its career and has played a central role in many Opera performances all through the seasons. Their ensemble ability and rich voices have achieved acclaim from co-starred singers, conductors, directors, stage staffs as well as domestic and foreign media.

Program

Takemitsu: Dreamtime（1981）

Program Notes
Brahms: Rhapsodie, Fragment aus Goethes "Harzreise im Winter", op.53*

Program Notes
Mahler: Symphony No.4 in G major**

Program Notes

Tōru Takemitsu: Born in Tokyo, October 8, 1930; died in Tokyo, February 20, 1996

It has been exactly a quarter of a century since Tōru Takemitsu died (February 20, 1996), but the mu-sical world still feels his loss. Not only was he Japanʼs greatest composer of the late twentieth century, but, in his own quiet, unassuming way, he was one of the preeminent musical figures of our time. The enormous list of prestigious commissions, honors, awards, and prizes he received attest to this stature. Takemitsuʼs great achievement was to synthesize with a high degree of success aspects of both West-ern and Oriental esthetics and techniques. Some think of him as an ambassador between musical cul-tures. “This was a very, very great man − a thinker, a philosopher and musician, says violinist and con-ductor Pinchas Zukerman. “Even when he talked, he talked in colors, as only the Japanese can. For me, he was the most extraordinary composer of the late twentieth century.”

A preoccupation with timbres, textures, colors and evanescent sonorities is the hallmark of Take-mitsuʼs style. Freely evolving musical material, contemplative moods and a sensation of quasi-spatial experience inform most of his music. In addition, there is a sense of profound reserve and self-control in this music, which is often dreamy, sensuous, delicate, and imbued with a huge palette of delicate pas-tels. These qualities are all apparent in Dreamtime.

The work takes its title from the indigenous concept of the Australian Aboriginals − creation stories and myths handed down from generation to generation. In 1981, Nederlands Dans Theater commissioned Takemitsu to create a work for them, and it was as a staged choreography that Dreamtime was first presented to the world. Hiroyuki Iwaki conducted the first con-cert performance with the Sapporo Symphony on June 27, 1982. The work constitutes one of the com-poserʼs “Dream and Number” series. Takemitsu has written that “just as a dream, for all its vividness of detail, points to an unanticipated, unreal whole, so in this work short episodes hang suspended in seem-ing incoherency to form a musical whole. The subtle variations in rhythm and changes in tempo only serve to emphasize the sensation of floating in the music.” Invited by Nederlands Dans Theaterʼs direc-tor and choreographer, Jiri Kylián, Takemitsu traveled to the island of Groot Eylandt, an island off the north coast of Australia where a historic first meeting of various indigenous tribes took place. The Aus-tralian composer Barry Conyngham offers this poetic description of Dreamtime:

“In the first few moments of the piece there is a sense of something emerging out of a smudged yet shimmering texture, a kind of musical pond that contains the images of the music yet obscures them. Each episode is like a stilling of the surface − we make out a shape, a rising line transferring from strings to woodwind to muted brass, etched by harps, celeste and subtle percussion. But each passes, the surface is disturbed, and we await the next clarity. The images seem to accumulate, the line be-comes almost familiar − but suddenly, after its simplest statement (on the flute), it is gone.”
Program notes by Robert Markow

Robert Markow's musical career began as a horn player in the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. He now writes program notes for orchestras and concert organizations in the USA, Canada, and several countries in Asia. As a journalist he covers the music scenes across North America, Europe, and Asian countries, especially Japan. At Montreal's McGill University he lectured on music for over 25 years.

Johannes Brahms: Born in Hamburg, May 7, 1833; died in Vienna, April 3, 1897

In July 1869, Brahms learned that the young lady with whom he was secretly in love, Julie Schumann (daughter of Robert and Clara), had become engaged to a count. In response, he composed the Alto Rhapsody for contralto, male choir, and orchestra, “medicine for the emotional sickness caused by the news,” as musicologist William Mann put it. Following an-nouncement of Julieʼs engagement, Clara Schumann noticed that the composer “has changed complete-ly, he seldom comes to visit, and speaks in monosyllables, even to Julie, to whom he used to be so kind.” Brahms called his Alto Rhapsody “a wedding song for the coun-tess Schumann,” adding that “with rage do I write this − with fury!”

Using the three central stanzas of Goetheʼs poem “Harzreise im Winter” (Winter Journey in the Harz Mountains), Brahms fashioned a three-part, one-movement composition of emotional distress and aching beauty. The words depict a lonely, bitter man, lost to the world, wandering through the snowy mountains in search of solace. The thirteen-minute work opens in a mood of deepest melancholy, the orchestra painting a scene of wintry bleakness and solitude with its melody unfolding in the lowest in-struments of the orchestra in unison (bassoons, cellos, double basses). Stabbing accents underscore the emotional pain. Eventually the voice enters in a kind of recitative, numbed with grief. The vocal writ-ing is declamatory, with wide leaps and poignant harmonic shifts; the worlds of Tristan and Parsifal are not far away. The gloom and burden of despair are somewhat relieved by a glimmer of hope in the sec-ond stanza, which moves at a slightly faster pace, beginning with the words “Ach, wer heilet die Schmerzen” (Ah, who can heal the pains). C minor, which has per-vaded from the beginning, turns to C major with the entry of the menʼs choir. This joins the solo voice for the exalted hymn that acts as a balm of reconciliation for the preceding agitation and grief.

The first performance of the Alto Rhapsody was given in Jena on March 3, 1870 with Pauline Viardot-Garcia, one of Europeʼs most famous singers, as soloist.
Program notes by Robert Markow

Robert Markow's musical career began as a horn player in the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. He now writes program notes for orchestras and concert organizations in the USA, Canada, and several countries in Asia. As a journalist he covers the music scenes across North America, Europe, and Asian countries, especially Japan. At Montreal's McGill University he lectured on music for over 25 years.

Ⅰ Bedächtig. Nicht eilen - Recht gemächlich　　　Deliberate. Not hurried - Quite genial
Ⅱ In gemächlicher Bewegung, ohne Hast　　　With leisurely motion
Ⅲ Ruhevoll (Poco adagio)　　　Serene (Poco adagio)
Ⅳ Sehr behaglich　　　Very leisurely

Gustav Mahler: Born in Kalischt, Bohemia, July 7, 1860; died in Vienna, May 18, 1911

Each of Mahlerʼs ten enormous symphonic edifices inhabits a world of its own and can boast any num-ber of unique features. The Fourth is a special symphony in the Mahler canon for its general air of child-like charm and gentle radiance, the absence of spiritual turmoil, its transparent textures, modest or-chestral forces (trombones and tuba are absent; horns are just four in number, percussion is used dis-creetly), relative brevity (under an hour) and use of a song as the concluding movement.

The Symphonyʼs first three movements were written in the summers of 1899 and 1900. Mahlerʼs orig-inal intention was not to create a full-fledged, four-movement symphony, but rather a “symphonic humoresque.” But by 1900 the conception had changed and grown considerably. A song Mahler had written in 1892 for soprano and piano was orchestrated and became the symphonyʼs finale, the subject of which (a child's view of heaven) is the goal to which the previous movements all aspire. Mahler himself led the Kaim Orchestra of Munich in the first performance of the Fourth Symphony on No-vember 25, 1901.

Only a split second is needed to identify the composition that opens with flutes playing even, repeated notes a fifth apart accompanied by jangling sleigh bells; nothing else sounds remotely like it. The good-natured, gemütlich first theme slides in with sunny radiance in the fourth bar, bringing to mind the composerʼs comparison of the symphonyʼs basic mood to “a sky of unbroken blue … only occasionally does it grow dark with ghostly menace.” The basic tonality of the symphony is G major, a key often as-sociated with genial moods and folksong. This movement proves to be one of Mahlerʼs most fertile in terms of thematic content. The first theme alone contains three separate elements (the smiling violin tune, a rising bass line, a few chuckles from the horn). A brief, jaunty, martial tune in the clarinets leads immediately into the yearning melody sung by cellos. A new mood is established by the woodwinds playing a perky, amusing, almost dance-like idea. Mahler then proceeds to incorporate this multitude of melodic strands into what musicologist Michael Steinberg calls a “game of interruptions, resumptions, extensions, reconsiderations, and unexpected combinations.”

The second movement (Scherzo) portrays a dance of death of Freund Hein, a popular character in German fairytales. His instrument is a country fiddle tuned a tone higher than normal in order to pro-duce an unearthly, harsh sound. Mahler maintained a lifelong preoccupation with death, but this death dance is not really as harrowing an affair as other composers, or as Mahler himself, have elsewhere portrayed it. It is sinister, to be sure, but at the same time it also retains a sense of humor. Mahler de-scribed the effect as “a grisly, sudden feeling which comes over us, just as one is often panic-stricken in broad daylight in a sunlit forest. The Scherzo is so mysterious, confused and supernatural that your hair will stand on end when you hear it. But in the Adagio to follow, where all this passes off, you will immediately see that it was not meant so seriously.” Two bucolic trios interrupt the dance, tempering its evil connotations and looking forward to the joys of a life in heaven.

The otherworldly serenity and ineffable beauty of the third movement bring us to the threshold of the heavenly life that awaits us in the finale. Mahler told his disciple, the conductor Bruno Walter, that his vision in this movement was that of a church sepulcher “showing a recumbent stone image of the de-ceased with his arms crossed in eternal sleep.” Mahler used the double variation form (developing two different melodic ideas in alternation), much as Beethoven had done in the Adagio of his Ninth Sym-phony. In a sudden outburst near the end of the movement, the full orchestra proclaims in brilliant col-ors a grandiose vision of heaven. The proclamation by the horns anticipates the melody the soprano will sing in the following movement.

The fourth movement is relatively short, but it perfectly and exquisitely fulfills its mission of depicting a childʼs view of heaven as a place of serene delight, simple joys and quiet mystery. The childʼs voice speaks to us in the words of a poem from Des Knaben Wunder-horn (The Youthʼs Magic Horn), a famous nineteenth-century collection of German folk poet-ry. Interspersed between the verses are brief reminders of earthly life (the symphonyʼs opening flutes and bells motif is now transformed into a harshly aggressive figure), but each time the text returns us to comforting celestial visions. The final moments bring us to the realization that this music does not really end, but rather fades into the quietude of heavenly peace.
Program notes by Robert Markow

Robert Markow's musical career began as a horn player in the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. He now writes program notes for orchestras and concert organizations in the USA, Canada, and several countries in Asia. As a journalist he covers the music scenes across North America, Europe, and Asian countries, especially Japan. At Montreal's McGill University he lectured on music for over 25 years.

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TMSO Special 2021 (2/20)

Artists

Kazushi ONO (Music Director)

Eri NAKAMURA (Soprano)

Mihoko FUJIMURA (Mezzo-soprano)

New National Theatre Chorus (Chorus)

Program

Ticket Price

Baby sitting Service

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