Customer Reviews

Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition - Tomita

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In Tomita's music I have found serene beauty, relaxation, landscapes of wonder, mysterious spaces, thrilling excitement, inspiration, and some fun. He creates his music with more depth, color, imagery, feeling, and thought than any other synthesized music I have ever heard.

The big box set of all 11 CDs has finally been released! Considering that a number of Tomita CDs are over $30, and all the CDs in the box have been remastered, it is almost a bargain! So here is my list, improved and updated for accuracy (August 2009)... As a person who started collecting Tomita and lots of other electronic music when I was 19 in 1979, plus the original symphony orchestra versions of the classical music that Tomita used, I hope you consider me qualified to create the following list of Tomita albums and review them as well.

Note on the 1991 Surround Sound CDs (Snowflakes to Kosmos): Tomita originally mixed his albums for special Quadraphonic LPs and tapes, but for some reason, the rear channel sounds almost completely disappear, no matter what stereo equipment a person listens on.

SNOWFLAKES ARE DANCING 1974
(11 Debussy pieces)
Some say Snowflakes is Tomita's best CD. I think it is in his top three. I love the range of styles in this album, the relaxing beauty, the depth of colors. The Snowflakes album is very enjoyable. One of the few CDs I have that I like to hear again and again.

The newly remastered High Performance CD is audiophile quality and adds Prelude To The Afternoon of a Faun also by Debussy.

PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION 1975 (Mussorgsky)
Also in the top 3. For this album Tomita created some of the most unusual, high quality electronic sounds ever heard. Then he used these sounds very effectively in good orchestrations. The listening is as enjoyable as it is bizarre; quite an accomplishment in itself. (Unlike other synthesized music, I have never gotten a headache listening to this or any other Tomita recording. Not even close. Not even when playing his music loud, which I love to do. )

FIREBIRD 1976
(Stravinsky: Firebird Suite. Debussy: Prelude To The Afternoon of A Faun. Mussorgsky: Night On Bare Mountain.)

Firebird is one of Tomita's best CDs. The Round of the Princesses is beautiful. The Infernal Dance of King Kastchei is exciting, scary, and LOUD - much more so than any performance by any orchestra. The Finale is so awesome; Tomita played it at the end of his live concerts.

THE PLANETS 1976 (Holst)
This one album is a completely different mood for Tomita. This is one Tomita album that is far better than any symphony orchestra performance could every be. Imagine Lord of The Rings before CGI. It is as if Holst was so far ahead of his time, that he composed The Planets for Tomita.

KOSMOS or COSMOS 1978
(Star Wars Title. Space Fantasy- R. Strauss: Thus Spake Zarathustra, Wagner: Ride of The Valkyries and Tannhauser Overture. Honnegar: Pacific 231. Ives: Unanswered Question. Rodrigo: Aranjuez. Grieg: Solveig's Song. Dinicu-Heifetz: Hora Staccato. Bach-Tomita: The Sea Named Solaris.)

This is a science fiction album without a theme, really. On this album: Star Wars is cute. The Space Fantasy is pretty good. Pacific 231 is exciting and fun, a quality piece. You can almost see the mechanical motions flying through space after the train leaves the tracks. Tomita's interpretation of the mystery and solitude of The Unanswered Question is far better than any orchestral performance of it! Hora Staccato is lots of fun. And Carl Sagan used the amazing Sea Named Solaris in his "Cosmos." The Sea Named Solaris is one of the greatest works of music every performed by anyone. Tomita fans and collectors should enjoy most of this CD.

THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE 1979 - A Musical Fantasy of Science Fiction
(Sibelius: Valse Triste. Williams: Close Encounters. Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet, Scythian Suite, Symphonies 5 and 6, Violin Concerto 1.)

After nearly 30 years of listening to The Bermuda Triangle off and on, I have decided that it is my all time favorite record album, CD, concept album, and my all time favorite synthesized music.

Another reviewer is absolutely right... Turn off the lights, put the phone on silent, turn the volume way up, and sit down and listen! Really listen!! Because The Bermuda Triangle is an Experience; A Phenomenal, Powerful, Enlightening, Enjoyable Experience!! And it's fun too.

Inexplicably, the U.S. CD releases stopped with Kosmos. The Bermuda Triangle is much better than Kosmos. I could type two pages on The Bermuda Triangle, and you can find many pages on various websites. But I will just say that the orchestrations and performances of the music itself all fit together masterfully to tell a story that is part thrilling science fiction and part impressionistic dream. I especially like the second half- the really good Prokofiev stuff. The sounds Tomita used in creating this album are his most sophisticated and fascinating yet, as innovative and high quality as Pictures At An Exhibition or more. The quality of the recording is bright, full, deep, clear, and clean. The whole experience is extraordinary. I am so grateful the album is on CD.

BOLERO or DAPHNIS AND CHLOE 1980
(Ravel: Daphnis and Chloe, Pavane for A Dead Princess, Bolero, Mother Goose Suite.)

This is a very good album with the best performance of The Mother Goose Suite that I have heard, by far. I love the range of musical styles in the Mother Goose Suite. You can actually hear the fairies in the Fairy Garden (they sound like hummingbirds). Plus, there are only two Daphnis and Chloes that I like better than this one. And the Pavane is very nice.

THE GRAND CANYON 1982 (Grofe)
(Bonus track: Syncopated Clock by Leroy Anderson)

Most music critics would say that this performance of The Grand Canyon Suite is not as good as a symphony orchestra's. But it is worth checking out, as parts of it are far more colorful, magical, and entertaining than any symphony orchestra version I have ever heard. Tomita's Painted Desert gives a feeling of flying low over vast mysterious, enchanted, moonlit sands. On The Trail is a lot of fun, although not as good as orchestra performances. And The Thunderstorm is exhilarating and even a little frightening, especially when turned up Loud. You can actually Hear the Lightning, Feel the Thunder, and then See a Rainbow at the end. Only Tomita could do that!! This is the shortest Tomita album. It would easily fit on a CD with Canon of The Three Stars.

CANON OF THE THREE STARS or DAWN CHORUS 1984
(Pachelbel: Canon. Rachmaninoff: Vocalise. Albinoni: Adagio. Bach: Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring. 4 pieces from Villa Lobos: Bachianis Brasileiras 2, 4, and 7.)

Sweet is the word I would use to describe pretty much this whole album. Some tracks are even cute, although at least one is solemn and another poignant. The quality of this album is not nearly as great as Snowflakes, Pictures, The Bermuda Triangle, or the Ravel Album. It almost seems that Tomita did this one in his sleep, but some tracks are very good, and since all the tracks are individual pieces it would be worth owning as a reference CD.

LIVE AT LINZ, AUSTRIA 1985 - THE MIND OF THE UNIVERSE
(Live concert with huge speakers on both sides of the Danube River and live soloists. Includes 7 pieces from previous albums- some with new arrangements and live soloists. Plus, Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring. Japanese Traditional: Cranes In Their Nest. Vaughn Williams: The Lark Ascending. Wagner: Tristan Und Isolde-Liebestod. Beethoven: Ode To Joy with full Choir and soloists.)

In my opinion, this is in Tomita's top five best albums. It contains some of the most beautiful and unique performances ever put on a disk. The live violin solo (Mariko Senju) of the Lark Ascending is by far the most captivating, lovely, and perfect I have ever heard; the best performance of The Lark Ascending that I know of. The same violinist does an outstanding job on Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1: Moderato; Allegro Moderato. This is the part of The Bermuda Triangle near the end that gets so exciting, and with the live violinist and Tomita's magical orchestral creations, it is truly one of the most thrilling musical experiences I have ever enjoyed.

I also love the Wagner: Tristan Und Isolde-Liebestod (which first appeared on this album). So much depth and feeling, it is hard to describe how lovely it is. This album also has an extended version of Cranes In Their Nest, a very good performance by Goro Yamaguchi, on the Shakuhachi.

Of the two concert CDs, this one has more awe-inspiring moments, and more depth. It is also the longest Tomita album ever made, which is perfect, since it is so enjoyable.

Note on sound quality: I appreciate good sound quality. This CD does have imperfect moments, but over all it is very good. I listened on my pretty good car stereo system last night turned up very LOUD. The most important parts are clean. There is reverb at times, but it is natural, bouncing off things in the area. It could have been mixed better, but it is very hard for a huge concert like this to be recorded perfectly. Also, during The Conversation from Close Encounters and the first couple minutes of Ode To Joy you can hear the helicopter that was holding up a huge speaker during the show. Actually hearing a helicopter on a CD may seem silly... BUT, it is these things that make you Feel as if you are At the Live Concert, and this is a huge Plus.

LIVE IN NEW YORK 1988 - BACK TO THE EARTH
(Live concert with live soloists. Includes 7 pieces from previous albums- some with new arrangements and live soloists. Plus Dukas: Fanfare. Mahler: Symphony 3 in D Minor - 5th Movement. Traditional: Chinese War Lord Going Home. Gershwin: Rhapsody In Blue. Fisher-Dvorak: Goin' Home.)

The Live In NY music is less demanding than Live At Linz, which makes it more suited for playing in the background. It is almost as good as the Live At Linz concert (above). But it has fake reverb all the way through, and is not as bright and clear as the other Tomita CDs. Not the best, but worth having.

These last two CDs are my all time favorite live concert albums.

BACH FANTASY 1996
10 separate Bach pieces, which include two tracks from previous albums. (Part of The Sea Named Solaris is mixed different.)

This Tomita CD has found its way into my top 5.

A rare, expensive CD, that is not included in the big new Box Set. This CD features some new sounds and musical styles for Tomita Classical, a really wide variety of them. Several of the tracks are most enjoyable. The popular Toccata and Fugue is a very good, virtuoso straight performance on very cool Synth Organ. My subwoofer liked it too! This is a perfect finale for the entire Tomita Classical Line.

IN CONCLUSION
Other reviewers on Amazon have done a more eloquent job than I of describing Tomita's amazing musical style, but I have enjoyed creating this guide. I hope you enjoyed it too. Thank you.

It started with Switched-on-Bach, synthesizer based orchestrations of classical and popular music.
Tomita, a Japanese performer has managed to come up with a version of the Pictures From An Exhibition which evokes the grandeur of the original. This 37-minute suite does better to take the listener through a space-age interpretation of this classic without getting hung-up in irrelevant bleeps and displeasing tone colors, such as is found in other synthesized records. Contrast this recording with the version of the Planets which he did. Unlike his Planets, Tomita sticks more to the material. This is a good record for those who are familiar with the original genre and are willing to explore modern interpretations. Compared to others who have attempted this kind of realization Tomita is consistently more accessible to the mainstream listener.

I bought the vinyl LP of this recording when it came out; THAT recording is OUTSTANDING. What happened when it went to digital (CD)? Why was it mixed differently? Some of the voices are placed so distant in the sound field as to be virtually inaudible. Aside from that, this is an excellent realization, in my opinion Tomita's best work, of an excellent composition.

Originally composed by Mussorgsky for solo piano the piece challenged both the performer and the instrument -- requiring the use of the sostenuto pedal (the last performance controller added to the piano). Each note of the organ sounds was performed and recorded one at a time, using patches created on the Moog III with up to 96 oscillators, with some configured to produce frequency modulation combined with standard subtractive synthesis.

The realizations acheived by Tomita are quite simply stunning. The limited timbral range and fixed stereo location of the piano are replaced by powerful organ sounds and rich choral textures which seem to move, sometimes slowly and sometimes very quickly, through the three physical dimensions and the unfathonable dimensions of the human psyche.

If you can listen to this album and not be emotionally stirred, you are probably dead. Also note: I have enjoyed this album since Junior High School on vinyl, cassette tape, and CD.

This piece was performed on the Moog synthesizer, a complex system where each note must be recorded individually on it's own track. If you like Mussorsky you'll love this recording.

I feel it is important that a new listener not listen to "Two Polish Jews" unprepared. Tomita's use of a choir-like effect immediately bring to mind the 6 million. It can be a profoundly disturbing rendition. Have no fear, just courage.

Although many others (including Stokowski) had tried their hand at it, Ravel's orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition is so universally famous and popular that you'd easily think the composition had been originally written as an orchestral piece by a composer called Mussorgsky-Ravel (a cousin of Rimsky-Korsakov, no doubt).

But of course it ain't so. Pictures at an Exhibition are first a piano cycle composed by Mussorgsky in 1874, a series of paintings in music really, so colorful and evocative that it is difficult to resist the urge of adding orchestral colors to them, as Ravel did (but he wasn't the first) in 1922, on a commission from conductor Serge Koussevitzky.

All that to say that Tomita's arrangement is as legitimate as anybody's. In fact, it is even more, because it is so good, fun and even funny, entertaining, inventive to the point of being outlandish.

One of the nice aspects of Tomita's arrangement is that, unlike many of the orchestrations that were made after 1922, it is entirely independent of Ravel's. The synthesized sounds he uses are sometimes derived from acoustic instruments (the quasi harpsichord recurs, various bell-like sounds, one sound in The Old Castle that I can only describe as "whistling" - not flute), sometimes purely electronic, but more often they mix timbres to the point of making any single instrument unrecognizable (is it a quasi balalaïka that I hear at the begining of The Old Castle?). He uses to the full the stereo separation.

Tomita also has a great sense of humor in his choice of timbres: try the quasi-flexatone at the beginning of gnomus, or the spooky quasi-ondes martenot right after, reminiscent of the cheap horror movies from the Hammer films, or the Ballet of the Chicks in their Shells - that's exactly what you hear, and it's hilarious. The use of vocal chorus, as in the first Promenade, sometimes gives the music a sci-fi aspect - not that it is out-of-sync with the whole project. There is also the use of a humming, basso solo voice - very Japanese, if I rely on my culture of Japanese films - in a number of pieces (The Old Castle, Bydlo, Catacombs) that is very intriguing.

This is an almost exclusive listener of classical music writing, not someone coming from pop music. I'm not sure listeners grown on Mussorgsky's original cycle and Ravel's orchestration won't be shocked by this - not those with open ears, but not all listeners of classical music have open ears, and some like to rest on their old listening habits and not be bullied out of them. But the value of Tomita's arrangement is precisely that it bullies the classical music listener out of his old listening habits, and return something of the original impact of Mussorgky's Pictures, which has become somewhat dulled by, precisely, those very listening habits (the same is true with, say, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, and even Beethoven's 5th Symphony - hey, what a loss that Tomita didn't do an arrangement of the latter, and of the complete Rite - there is an excerpt in the album Tomita: Live At Linz 1984: The Mind of the Universe). Tomita's Pictures are a feast for the ear, sometimes a gaudy one, as was for the eye, presumably, the Viktor Hartmann exhibition that gave Mussorgsky the incentive to compose his cycle.

The only drawback then is the short, LP-derived TT of 37 minutes. Hey, with such entertaining stuff, you want more.

Isao Tomita's use of electronic synthesisers in the early to mid 1970s was truly inspirational. He created sounds that, up to that point, had not been heard before, and in so doing, he became an inspiration for the following generation of electronic and new age musicians. His choice of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition was carefully chosen, which like his other works incorporating Claude Debussy's tone paintings, allowed him to show the full palette of expressions, sounds and rhythms available from Korg, Roland, Moog, et al.

As a person who plays no musical instruments, I can react to music only on a visceral level, then cerebrally after the fact. Tomita's "Pictures at an Exhibition" sounds like something composed for four dimensions by chrome angels from the future, created from an alternate reality for some new plane of consciousness. Thirty years later, it's still relevant. This electronic realization magnifies the vision and emotions evoked in the original Mussorgsky piano compositions, interprets them with bolder imagery. It allows them to move around in space. I think Mussorgsky would have approved. If there's a hindrance to totally surrendering to it, it's these abrupt changes in tempo and electronic flourishes, which created jagged ridges in the new aural landscape. They're shorter and shift motifs quickly and have no distinct hook to hold on to, and I sometimes feel left behind. I find myself when I get to them eager for the next track, so they become for me bridges I'll take between the illuminated plateaus. Those would be the longer smoother compositions, such as "The Old Castle," "Bydlo," and "Limoges/Catacombs." They have something closer to organic rhythms as they expand toward completion at the last track, "Great Gate of Kiev." But if taken as a single composition, it's all good. All of it. It's a masterpiece in electronic music and Tomita is the maestro. I pity people who've never been able to get out of the shell of their own tastes to experience a new realm like this. The first time I heard it, it was on a pair of expensive headphones, and I don't think I've been the same since.

He has another album just as accomplished in my estimation, Tomita: Firebird. For some reason, as unarguably good as it is, it's been out of circulation for years, and you'd have to pay with a vital organ to procure a copy. Its surreal spacial quality was bounded by a more recognizable earthbound deference to melody than "Pictures at an Exhibition." But the Tomita's rendition of "Night on Bald Mountain" had the best of all worlds. Clearly Mussorgsky's music lends itself easily to electronic interpretation.

Tomita's Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition is highly recommended. Get your mind blown.
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I first learned about Isao Tomita's music when I was a teenager and had been waiting forever for it to come to CD - I love his style, his orchestrations of the classics, and highly recommend anyone who likes synthesized music to listen - some of his movements in this piece are even better than the full orchestra, which I recently enjoyed here again in Baltimore. Try it! You might like it!