Customer Reviews

Minoru Miki: Selected Works I

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Minoru Miki is a leading classical composer of Japan, best known to Western audiences for having established the Pro Musica/Ensemble Nipponia, which promotes traditional music throughout the world and performed on three excellent albums issued by Nonesuch. This compilation, Volume I of Miki's selected works, is performed solely with traditional instruments. The first work is a concert suite on the seasons derived from his previous dance works. Since Vivaldi, the seasons have been an impressionistic theme for classical works, and Miki's brief sections do indeed capture the respective moods. (In 1992, he and the Pro Musica Nipponia would produce a set of 4 CDs each dedicated to a season, which consisted of adaptations of well-known traditional Japanese classical, folk, and theatre [No, Kabuki] melodies.) The second composition on this particular album, Hote, is a three-part modern and innovative percussive work suggestive of a ceremonial flame. Behind the four taiko players are nearly a score of koto and flute players who create a festive atmosphere. It reminds me of Kabuki, with its dramatic sections and accents. The final work, Wa, is complex and as varied as the meaning of this Japanese syllable (concepts with an enso circle, such as totality, a wheel, harmony, an interjection of surprise). It is sparse, beginning with solo koto and developing with biwa, shakuhachi, and various percussion in permutation and combination. While having the sound of an old classical work, the piece is thoroughly modern and somewhat improvisational. This album is rich in melody, rhythm, and timbre and may be enjoyed by all those who appreciate contemporary classical and world music.

If you love Japanese music here in the States, the music on this CD will doubtlessly sound strangely familiar. Indeed, Minoru Miki and his musical group Pro Musica Nipponia have been introducing musical explorers to the music of Japan for decades through Nonesuch series albums such as Traditional Vocal And Instrumental Music (Japan) and Japan: Kabuki & Other Traditional Music. If they are designed to showcase the range of traditional Japanese music in microcosm, though, this CD is a bit different, focused as it is on Miki's original compositions in a neo-traditional mode--a serious artistic attempt on his part to create a form of modern music at once authentic and compelling, accessible while true to Japan's excellent though sadly somewhat ignored musical heritage. And it works. Using strictly traditional instruments such as the koto, shakuhachi, and shamisen and working within the idioms and moods of premodern Japanese music, the selections on this CD are wonderfully vibrant and lyrical without for the most part feeling strained and self-consciously exotic. It just goes to show that Hogaku doesn't have to be stuffy.

The four pieces making up "'Four Seasons' Dances Concertantes" were composed by Miki between 1956 and 1972 and put together in this form in 1973. "Hote" and "Wa" were composed in 1976 and are larger-scale works to some degree designed for performance abroad. The liner notes are extensive in Japanese and somewhat summarized from the original but adequate in English. Overall this is a fine CD of excellent music. And if, like me, you came to Japanese music through the Nonesuch albums, then you'll surely enjoy hearing Miki and company doing their own thing as it were. Well, at least I did.