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fracturing reflected in Watanabe’s German title. DUO IMAGINAIRE: Japanese Echoes, Hommage à Francesco Filidei’s Corde Vuote (Open Strings) dif- Claude Debussy. Chromart Classics, TYXart TXA17099 fers from the other pieces on the recording in its concentration on the violin and cello (the piano In the midst of the Japonisme-craze that over- enters for the first time halfway through the took the Paris art scene in the years around piece), and its more constrained approach to 1900, Claude Debussy insisted on having materials and development. The placid flow of Hokusai’s iconic Under the Wave off Kanagawa the work, along with the ringing sustains of as the cover of the first edition of La Mer in the open strings and harmonics, appears to ani- 1905. The composer himself possessed a print, mate and anthropomorphize the strings into a which hung in his living room. set of gently respirating lungs. Notwithstanding That being said, the influence of Japanese art its consistency, the piece also contains several is often described as being subtler in Debussy’s deftly handled harmonic twists, particularly oeuvre compared to his more exoticism-oriented two-thirds of the way through, prior to its grad- contemporaries such as Saint-Saëns and Sullivan. ual, semi-retrograde exhalation. His entry is more abstract, through relating to Where the strength of Filidei’s piece rests in his the way space and timbre are treated in Japanese effortless and restrained application of open string music. ’Music is the space between notes’ spectra, in Il colore dell’ombra, Clara Iannotta delves Debussy declared. Whether or not he knowingly further into spectrality via colour theory. echoed the Japanese culture of ‘ma’,or‘sensibil- Iannotta’s powerful work can partially be heard ity for the space between’, the parallel is at- through the filter of French impressionist painters, tractive. This didn’t of course prevent eastern who adopted Eugène Chevreul’s research into pentatonic scales from making multiple cameo separating effects of light, and chiaroscuro. From appearances. Chevreul, Renoir gleaned that ‘No shadow is Duo Imaginaire wanted to give six Japanese black. It always has a colour. Nature knows only composers the opportunity to return the favour. colours’. Subsequently, shadow colour was no To bring out the Japanese in Debussy, as well as longer considered primary tone plus darkness, Debussy in the expression of the cosmopolitan but a fine composite of pigments and their oppo- Japanese composers. Many of them have studied sites. Similarly, Monet’s 20 paintings of the at key institutions of Central European modern- Rouen Cathedral (1892–94) investigate the fleet- ism or with prestigious teachers of the same ing, changing light, colour and shadow on the vein. In the global village, Debussy should self- structure at different times of day, different evidently be considered part of their heritage. times of year, and in different weather conditions. The 50–50 gender balance of the commissions Music, on the other hand, has the advantage of is laudable. uninterrupted mobility through time, which is Each composer chose one of the préludes to fundamental to Il colore dell’ombra’s achievement. precede their work in a call and answer. A liter- In the first section, ‘Passage com un velo’, the loo- ary twin of this kind of programming principle is sened strings offer a dark, guttural quality to the ‘Waka’ or Japanese respondent poetry, where a transitory tone colourings of the cello, supported tanka-metre poem is written in response to by the radiant cyclic rumbling of low piano harmo- another – perhaps as an exchange of love-letters nics. ‘D’un fiato’ (in one breath) continues the or a political debate. These six preludes were muscular deployment of extreme registers from then arranged by Duo Imaginaire’s harpist the first movement, receding to calm, whistling Simone Seiler and clarinettist John Corbett. harmonics in the strings. The brief final move- The rapport is very clear in all the pieces, ment shimmies along like shifting colour filters, which is not always a virtue. In the last pair, crossing, accumulating, and separating back in a Asako Miyaki’s response The garden of afterimage mysterious continuity that quickly accelerates to II – butterfly pattern starts from the second chord its conclusion. of Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir Overlooking the awkward, under-edited liner and attempts to gather momentum through pin- notes, Passage is an inspired debut album, on ning onto Debussy’s contour. Unfortunately, which Longleash is tethered to tight playing Miyaki’s work never manages to catch wind. and bound together in lucid interpretations of The unambitious fragments follow each other the music. without audible reason, and so remain intro- verted and insular. Paul Steenhuisen Satoshi Minami’s Soundprint No.4 manages 10.1017/S0040298217001371 better to keep the characteristic drive and flow of La danse de Puck, mirroring its abundant use

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of dotted rhythms and mapping the clarinet line a few minutes of strange dialogue between often directly onto Debussy’s line. Minami struc- twentieth- and twenty-first-century aesthetics. tures the harmony of the work on a tangible Omura writes a pastiche of Debussy until little three-note motive, which arches right through over halfway into the piece, where her own to the end. The album’s orchestration is at its voice beautifully comes to the fore. Here, un- most inventive here: the harp is prepared with shaded, is a transparent and spacious harp paper sheets in the lowest register, and the clari- solo intertwined with clarinet multiphonics net plays with its bell hovering over a snare- and timbral trills beautifully enunciated by drum. This conjures an imaginary third per- Corbett. Overall, Omura succeeds in an orches- former, a ghost pipe-and-drum player, enhancing tral sound, as if the work were scored for the dance-character of the work. more than two instruments. The wintery imagery of Des pas sur la neige is Again, it is the opening gesture of Debussy seamlessly continued by Yasuko Yamaguchi’s Die that sparks its sister. Meditating on the F# that Entdeckung der Freude im Schnee. The works share begins Feuilles mortes, the melodic permutation an initial motive, from which Yamaguchi quickly that ensues in Takayuki Rai’s Misty Stillness fans out. A fast forward through twentieth- brings to mind a potentiometer: Rai rolls the century instrumentation ensues, ending in glis- knob subtly from Debussy to rigorous post-serial sandi and timbral trills. The narrative of the harmony at crucial points. The approach is that work is very evocative of the title, ending with of a sentimental scientist. Research into the the clarinet shivering in the cold. The exhilarant, many subtle spectres of harp and clarinet unison repetitive gestures in the distinctive middle part is ornamented with quaint flashbacks. are suggestive of a syllabic metre and unques- The Debussy arrangements are streamlined tionably her own. and devout to the style and period of the After Canope comes a welcomingly long clari- préludes. They are orchestrated according to net solo. Most of the pieces have both instruments the period. Debussy writes music for horns, playing all the time. Here, in Takashi Fuji’s flutes, wind machines and harps, all this arsenal Annotation on a Japanese Lullaby there is space. having to be realised with only the white and Fuji first lets the single line fork into polyphony black keys at hand. Duo Imaginaire slightly before introducing quarter-tones, poetically re- enhances this colour palette, albeit leaving the instating a – to our ears microtonal – pentatonic contemporary expansion of the misty sound col- sound that Debussy would have heard at the ours and orchestrational techniques to the Paris World Fairs of 1889 and 1900. The scorda- composers. tura of the harp and the carefully placed melodic The roles of the clarinet and the harp remain microtones in the clarinet grown beautifully unswapped throughout, the clarinet carrying the from one another. Here Fuji audaciously presents solistic line and the harp the accompanying fig- a fragile foreign object. A short traditional ures. This is the obvious starting point for such Japanese lullaby appears, continent and tasteful, an ensemble, so therefore there’s an incentive just moments before the work culminates in a to be inventive and look for ways to break this microtonal fanfare in impressive unison. setup. Des pas sur la neige and Brouillards indeed Moments of complex clarity such as this one are do so, transforming the preludes into glorious otherwise mostly found in Debussy’s contribution dwellings into Simone Seiler’s sound. Magnetic to the album. together, Duo Imaginaire seek and find a great Kumiko Omura’s counterpart À travers le variety of ways to express their musicality – brouillard starts where Brouillards ends, setting even within austere concision. the same diatonic standard and quickly going away from the quiet and settled. Metallic Lauri Supponen multiphonics and a low half-pedal rattle herald 10.1017/S0040298217001383

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