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8.570337 was revised the following year, with the entire work darkness deep behind the whites of their penetrating RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra undergoing final revision in 2006 for this recording. It eyes, Matsumura felt as if he had heard their sorrowful DDD was the last time that Matsumura worked on its voices. The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra plays a central rôle in classical music orchestration, and this recording represents the first Symphony No. 2 is more flexible in style than his in Ireland, through live performance, broadcast and touring. As an integral part ever performance of the final version. earlier works, open to various influences from of RTÉ, the orchestra reaches a great number of listeners through its weekly Matsumura’s inspiration for writing this elements of Western classical music, including broadcasts on RTÉ lyric fm and through its association with the European symphony came from the sight of a poster of the tonality. Symphony No. 1 and Prelude for Orchestra, Broadcasting Union (EBU). In addition to its annual subscription season, Kongorikishi at Kofukuji (a famous temple in Nara). on the other hand, insist on an Asian sensibility. Horizons contemporary music series, national tours and summer concerts Teizo Kongorikishi, also known as Nio, are a pair of sumo- Matsumura believed that transcendent music, as series, the orchestra continues to make a name for itself internationally through wrestler-like statues standing at the entrance of represented by Bach and Mozart, is inherently imbued its recordings with Naxos, Marco Polo and on the RTÉ label. In 2004, the RTÉ MATSUMURA Buddhist temples. With angry countenances and with a certain “flexibility”. Symphony No. 2 is NSO won the Orchestra and Concerto: CD Première category of the Critics’ imposing musculature, the statues act as guardians of Matsumura’s spiritual monologue, full of both sorrow Awards in the Cannes Classical Awards for its recording of Joly Braga Santos’ the Buddha. One of the pair, with mouth agape, is and hope, marking the close of the twentieth century. Symphony No. 4 under conductor Álvaro Cassuto (Marco Polo 8.225233). In called A-gyo and the other with mouth closed is 2005, Gerald Barry’s opera The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant was released on known as Un-gyo. “A” denotes the first note when Koichi Nishi the RTÉ label to considerable acclaim, as part of a new Composers of Ireland someone opens his mouth and “Un” denotes the last series. This has been followed by CDs of work by Raymond Deane, Seóirse note when one closes his mouth. The two figures thus Edited and translated by Akihiko Ushio Bodley, Deirdre Gribbin and Ian Wilson, the latter three on the RTÉ lyric fm can represent the beginning and the end of the and Jeffrey L. Hart. Adapted by Naxos label. www.rte.ie/nationalsymphonyorchestra Symphonies universe. Witnessing their fierce appearance, with Takuo Yuasa Nos. 1 and 2 Takuo Yuasa was born in Osaka, where he studied , cello, and Ikuyo Kamiya . At eighteen he left to study in the United States at the University of Cincinnati, before studying conducting in Europe with Hans To the Night of The leading Japanese pianist Ikuyo Kamiya began the piano at the age of eight, studied under Aiko Iguchi at the Swarowsky at the Vienna Hochschule, then with Igor Markevitch in France Toho Gakuen School of Music in and, following her first prize at the Japan Music Competition, was and with Franco Ferrara in Siena before he became assistant to Lovro von Gethsemane chosen to study at the Essen National Academy in Germany, where she was a pupil of Klaus Hellwig and Stefan Matacic, working with him in Monte Carlo, Milan and Vienna. Since Askenaze. Her international career was launched following her victory at the 1972 Queen Elisabeth International winning a Special Award at the Fitelberg International Conducting Music Competition, after which she was invited to perform throughout Belgium at various festivals in recital and Competition in Katowice, Poland, Takuo Yuasa has frequently conducted the as a soloist with orchestras including the Brussels National Orchestra and the Antwerp Orchestra. She has since major Polish orchestras, including the Warsaw National Philharmonic and collaborated with leading orchestras and distinguished colleagues throughout the world. Ikuyo Kamiya is known Photo: Akira Kinoshita Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestras. He regularly performs for her wide repertoire, and has made twenty recordings on the RCA label, including acclaimed recordings of the throughout Europe and the Far East. In Japan he has held the position of Principal Conductor with the Gumma major Beethoven sonatas. She continued to record on the Fontec label and in 2001 released a CD marking the Symphony Orchestra and in the United Kingdom he has been Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Scottish 35th anniversary of her début featuring the Grieg and Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4 with the Symphony Orchestra and of the Ulster Orchestra in Northern Ireland. He has a successful recording career as an Ikuyo Kamiya, Piano Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra of Moscow Radio and Chosei Komatsu. In 1988 she received the prestigious exclusive Naxos artist with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra, Arts Festival Award of Japan. She is currently professor at Municipal University. BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland and others, with a wide range of repertoire which covers Britten, Macmillan, Rawsthorne, Webern, Schoenberg, Honegger, Vieuxtemps, MacDowell, RTÉ National Schubert, Rimsky-Korsakov, Pärt, Górecki, Glass and Nyman, and the Japanese composers Mayuzumi, Ohki, Bekku, Yashiro, Moroi, Akutagawa and Yamada. This versatility is recognised by orchestras around the world, who Symphony Orchestra engage him to conduct standard core repertoire as well as less well-known pieces by major composers. Takuo Yuasa 8.570337 5 8.570337 6 570337 bk Matsumura 24/6/11 10:56 Page 2

Teizo Matsumura (1929-2007) of hospital and once again started living in the were to be reflected in his later works. Becoming deeply focusing on a single core. Piano Concerto No. 2 is one write music “conceived of with an Asian mindset” and Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2 • To the Night of Gethsemane kindergarten. The work ultimately was awarded first involved in drama combined with music, he was of Matsumura’s most popular works. It has been “full of primitive energy directly rooted in the very prize in the competition and was given its première by naturally inclined to write an opera, an effort that would performed in many countries including the United origins of life”. The classic work for which he felt the Teizo Matsumura completely unaware later of how he had arrived back the NHK Symphony Orchestra under the direction of bear fruit later in his life. States, England, France and Russia. The conductor strongest affinity was Stravinsky’s Le sacre du reached the zenith of home that day. This incident turned out to be his crucial Kazuo Yamada. This marked his début as a professional Achime (1957), Music for String Quartet and Piano Valery Gergiev has performed this concerto, as well as printemps, but its optimistically diatonic melodies and his creativity in Japan encounter with music. Entering the Third High School composer. Akira Ifukube, who sat on the jury, highly (1962), Symphony No. 1 (1965) and Prelude for Prelude for Orchestra, since 1986. Tikhon clear rhythms linked to dance were no longer the after World War II. He in 1945, at the age of sixteen, he formed a music club praised Matsumura for his “attitude of speaking Orchestra (1967) were conceived with an Asian Khrennikov, then Secretary of the Union of Soviet sound he was seeking. Groping his way forward, he started his professional and devoted himself to music more ardently than ever sincerely in his own language”, and with that, mindset. Matsumura’s attempts to write symphonies Composers, also praised this work as “one of the most gradually became obsessed with a vague image of an career as a composer before. His mother died of tuberculosis in 1949, and in Matsumura determined to study with Ifukube. A pupil were accompanied by considerable difficulty, however, important piano concertos of the twentieth century.” enormous accumulation of chaotic sounds, until one later than such August of that year he travelled to Tokyo, turning to the of the Russian composer Alexander Tcherepnin, Ifukube as he had to confront the task of writing for a European In 1980 the Suntory Music Foundation day he was inspired by a photograph of a group of contemporaries as composer Yasuji Kiyose for help in preparation for the encouraged Matsumura to write music imbued with orchestra using one of the most orthodox forms in commissioned an opera from Matsumura. Based on a many stone images of the Buddha. These took on the Toru Takemitsu, entrance examination for admission to Tokyo University primitive energy, and Tcherepnin’s idea that “Western Western music, all the while maintaining an Asian novel of the same title by Shusaku Endo, Silence treats appearance of a huge swarm of locusts, wildly Toshiro Mayuzumi, Joji Yuasa, Akio Yashiro and of the Arts. civilization is now stuck in history and Asian consciousness. On the way he produced a trial piece the subject of God and man in seventeenth-century sweeping over the earth. Overwhelmed by the image, Michio Mamiya, as he was forced to spend a long five- In Tokyo, living and working in a kindergarten civilization will move to the forefront” further enhanced with limited instrumentation, Music for String Quartet feudal Japan, when Christianity was forbidden. It took he determined to write an orchestral work full of such and-a-half years from the age of 21 convalescing from (happily, he was free to use their piano), Matsumura Matsumura’s inclination to create non-European music. and Piano, in which several melodies derived from a him thirteen years to complete the work and two years energy, setting to work on his Symphony No. 1. tuberculosis. This period, nevertheless, may have often visited Yasuji Kiyose’s home, where he became In 1957 Matsumura wrote a significant work titled single motif vary and conflict in the course of the work, to finish the revisions. Given its première in 1993, the To the Night of Gethsemane is Matsumura’s final fostered the foundation of his unique thinking about acquainted with Toru Takemitsu, one of Kiyose’s pupils. Achime for soprano, percussion and 11 players, to be finally forming a harmonious stream, without giving opera reveals the essence of Matsumura’s creativity. A orchestral work. It was commissioned by the musical creation. Lying in bed with nothing to do but Kiyose also introduced Matsumura to Tomojiro performed at a concert put on by Ikenouchi and his rise to confrontation or contrast. psychological drama replete with mental anguish is Orchestral Ensemble (Matsumura was the ponder the very essence of things, he reached a state of Ikenouchi, the first Japanese composer to study at the pupils. (“Achime” is one type of traditional kagura Symphony No.1, which can be regarded as a presented to great effect, with subtle wide-ranging composer in residence of this chamber orchestra) and mind akin to that achieved in Zen meditation. In hospital Paris Conservatoire and to bring French compositional music, played in celebration of Shinto gods at shrines in prototypical Japanese symphony aiming at a post- dynamics and diversity of sounds ranging from given its première on 8th September, 2002, under the he composed Haiku poetry which, in its condensed form techniques to Japan. Taking Ravel’s music as a model, Japan.) Matsumura asserted that this work virtually European conception, is also based on purely monistic chamber music-like delicacy to chaotic intensity. A direction of Hiroyuki Iwaki. The work was revised in of five-seven-five syllables, attempts to express Ikenouchi trained many distinguished pupils, including amounted to his Opus 1, conceived, as it was, with principles – every element is derived from a single root simple melody of prayer floats in the background, 2003 and then once again in May 2005. The original maximum meaning, including the concept of infinity. Sadao Bekku, Akio Yashiro, Toshiro Mayuzumi, Michio Asian sensibility. In this work he attempts to write and built into a unified overriding structure –, although arising from the elaborate score, with merely a hint of instrumentation consisted of strings with dual winds, This exerted a profound influence on Matsumura’s Mamiya, Minoru Miki and Akira Miyoshi. The “music full of vigour and vitality, underpinned by it presents an overwhelming soundscape, where the God’s presence. A constant tension is maintained in the and two percussionists, but without , piano thought and compositional processes as he strove for significance of his meeting with Ikenouchi can be seen intense rhythms originating from ancient Japan”, notes surge like a flood, multiplying and amplifying score. or harp. Two trombones were added for the work’s “primitive energy directly rooted in the very origins of in the portrait of Ikenouchi that stood on Matsumura’s eliminating the static and quiet elements commonly infinitely. This musical style differs from the Western After completing Silence, Matsumura produced final revision, which was first performed on 20th June, life” and “music conceived of with an Asian mindset”. work-desk all his life. seen in so many works based on Japanese traditional dialectic method, with two or more contrasting themes. such penetrating works as String Quartet (1996), the 2005, by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra under the Melodies and melodic patterns are repeated persistently, Matsumura passed the entrance exam for Tokyo music, and also rejecting dodecaphonic composition The Symphony was commissioned by the Japan song cycle The Poor faithful (1996), Symphony No. 2 direction of Kazuhiko Komatsu. In this work interwoven heterophonically, and finally multiplied and University of the Arts and came top in the acceptance and post-Webernian methods predominant in Europe at Philharmonic Orchestra and first performed by the (1998) and the suite of piano pieces titled Pilgrimage Matsumura’s style is more flexible and expansive than accumulated. list. He was ultimately rejected, however, after a that time. Thus, Matsumura’s music, in an attempt to orchestra under the direction of Akeo Watanabe on 15th (1999-2000). His final work, Portrait for cello and before. To the Night of Gethsemane was inspired by Matsumura was born in Kyoto on 15th January, medical examination, which diagnosed tuberculosis. explore roots, returns to the past, capturing not only June, 1965. It was published by the Ongaku-no-Tomo piano, was written in 2006 in memory of Keizo Saji, Giotto’s fresco The Kiss of Judas (1305), which 1929, the third of five children, to a family of kimono Utterly devastated, he wandered about for several days elements of primitive Japan but also reaching across to sha Corporation in 1967. former chairman of the Suntory Music Foundation. depicts Judas betraying Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. merchants. He grew up in the ancient city, with its with sleeping pills at the ready in his hand. One day, Asia and India. In 1971 Matsumura’s long-held dream came true. Matsumura’s creative energy never declined over the Matsumura masterfully renders Jesus’s penetrating numerous historic temples and steeped in Japanese however, a friend played him a recording of Ravel’s In 1959 Matsumura began to write music for films He made a journey to India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, years, but on 6th August, 2007, as he was planning eyes and Judas’s look of dismay in this symphonic tradition and religious feeling. When Matsumura was String Quartet, the beauty of which persuaded him to and the theatre. He ultimately produced a hundred visiting many historic Buddhist sites. This experience further works, he died in Tokyo of pneumonia. His poem. The solo violin, with its beautiful plaintive only ten years old, however, his father succumbed to give up any idea of suicide. works for the cinema and fifty for the stage. His film was to be reflected in his later works: Courtyard of music, which explores the very origins of its subjects, prayer in the coda, is impressive. cancer. It was in elementary school that Matsumura first During his long days in hospital, Matsumura wrote music is marked by three significant features: monistic Apsaras for flute, violin and piano (1971), Piano continues to exert strong influence on young Japanese In 1998 Matsumura wrote Symphony No. 2 for expressed interest in Western music, listening to Introduction and Allegro Concertante, which anticipates themes derived from a single root, lyrical melodies Concerto No. 1 (1973), Hymn to Aurora for mixed composers. piano and orchestra (1998/1999/2006) at the request of broadcasts and trying his hand at composing music. At the brilliance and feeling found in his later works, while elaborated with chamber instrumentation, and chorus and chamber ensemble (1978) and Piano After writing Achime, Matsumura felt that he the Suntory Music Foundation. It was first performed his junior high school he first heard a recording of alluding to influences from Ravel and Stravinsky. When experimental timbres (generated by music tapes, Concerto No. 2 (1978). In these works a persistent could no longer depend on polyphonic and by the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra under Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, conducted by Arturo this piece passed the preliminary stage of the judging in synthesizers and the technique of musique concrète) with astonishing sustainability creates a homophonic techniques in Western music to provide the direction of Tadaaki Odaka, with Minoru Nojima Toscanini, and was so swept away that he was the Japan Music Competition, Matsumura checked out rarely heard in his concert pieces. These elements also structure of dazzlingly magnificent sound, finally his basic means of expression. His new aim was to as the solo pianist. The symphony’s third movement

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