Songs from Japan and Europe — a relationship in music (TYXart)
★★★★☆
🎧 TYXart
Like each reviewer I really like surprises, and nothing has shocked me extra in a month of Easter Sundays than this delicate and sensible pairing of Japanese and Viennese classical songs. The album notes are skimpy and principally in Japanese so I’m guessing right here, however I’ll credit score the collection of songs in addition to the efficiency to Misaki Kobayashi, apparently a soprano within the Berlin radio choir.
The pairings are so good they’re virtually symbiotic. Kobayashi opens with a springtime track by Rentaro Taki (1879-1903) and matches it with Beethoven’s little-sung Ich liebe dich. Who’d have thought? It really works brilliantly.
Subsequent up is identical spring theme composed by Akira Nakada (born 1951) and W. A. Mozart. I appreciated the Nakada significantly better. It had extra zest. One other chap referred to as Nakada is twinned with a Zemlinsky waltz. Bear in mind Zemlinsky? Arnold Schoenberg’s solely trainer. It simply will get higher and higher.
If I used to be an enterprising impresario in Berlin I’d be pulling Misaki Kobayashi out of that radio choir and giving her a solo recital, or a job within the workplace. Or taking her to dinner. She has a really authentic thoughts and a candy, mild soprano voice and not using a trace of wobble. The pianist is Matthias Veil and the label is off the overwhelmed observe, in a village referred to as Nittendorf.
Surprises all spherical.
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Norman Lebrecht is likely one of the most widely-read commentators on music, tradition and cultural politics. He’s an everyday presenter on BBC Radio 3 and a contributor to the Wall Road Journal, Bloomberg, Standpoint, Sinfini and different publications. His weblog, Slipped Disc, is among the many most generally learn cultural websites on-line, breaking unique tales and campaigning towards human abuse and acts of injustice within the cultural industries.
