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Tuesday, July 31, 2018

Akira Ifukube - Sinfonia Tapkaara; Ritmica Ostinata (Dmitry Yablonsky)


Information

Composer: Akira Ifukube
  1. Sinfonia Tapkaara: I. Lento molto - Allegro
  2. Sinfonia Tapkaara: II. Adagio
  3. Sinfonia Tapkaara: III. Vivace
  4. Ritmica Ostinata for Piano and Orchestra
  5. Symphonic Fantasia No. 1

Ekaterina Saranceva, piano
Russian Philharmonic Orchestra
Dmitry Yablonsky, conductor

Date: 2005
Label: Naxos
https://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.557587

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Review

ARTISTIC QUALITY: 9 / SOUND QUALITY: 9

Akira Ifukube (b. 1914) is best known as the composer of the scores to the various Godzilla films. His Symphonic Fantasia No. 1 is in fact an arrangement of themes from the various monster movies, and a very skillful one. Ifukube’s style takes its inspiration from Stravinsky and the French neo-classicists (such as Roussel), and from nationalist composers of the same period such as Falla. Folk-tinged melodies mingle with bracing passages full of driving, syncopated rhythms. Sinfonia Tapkaara, for example, has much in common with the sound of Portuguese composer Joly Braga Santos (if you’ve been following that series on Marco Polo, compare the finale to the last two movements of Santos’ Divertimento No. 1). Its slow movement features a lovely tune that begins like the Romance from Prokofiev’s Lt. Kijé. Ritmica Ostinata for piano and orchestra sounds like a continuation of Colin McPhee’s Tabuh-Tabuhan, with its Asian-influenced ostinatos and minimalist aesthetic. Original it may not be, but it’s tremendous fun, very well-written, and though drawing on familiar elements, the mix is Ifukube’s own.

King Records in Japan has issued a series of discs devoted to Ifukube’s works in various media. These are not easy to find here, and ordering them from Japanese sources is quite expensive. That makes this Naxos disc especially welcome. The performances are all very good ones, full of the necessary driving energy, and Dmitry Yablonsky has his ensemble in good shape. In Ritmica Ostinata, pianist Ekaterina Saranceva does a particularly fine job with a part that requires lots of endurance and a sharp rhythmic sense. The engineering also balances the solo instrument correctly, as a leading voice embedded within the orchestral textures rather than front and center at all times. This is the kind of disc that really deserves popular success beyond the usual classical music crowd, and Naxos might do well to invest some time and effort in making more of Ifukube’s concert pieces available. They could have a genuine hit on their hands.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday

More reviews:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2006/Jan06/IFUKUBE_8557587.htm
http://www.classical.net/music/recs/reviews/n/nxs57587a.php
https://www.allmusic.com/album/ifukube-sinfonia-tapkaara-ritmica-ostinata-symphonic-fantasia-no-1-mw0001944240
https://www.amazon.com/Ifukube-Sinfonia-Tapkaara-Ostinata-Symphonic/dp/B000BJBHCA

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Akira Ifukube (31 May 1914 – 8 February 2006) was a Japanese composer. He taught at the Tokyo University of the Arts (formerly Tokyo Music School), during which period he composed his first film score in 1947. Over the next fifty years, he would compose more than 250 film scores, the high point of which was his 1954 music for Ishirō Honda's Toho movie, Godzilla. Despite his financial success as a film composer, Ifukube always loved to compose classical work. Ifukube trained many younger generation composers, and also published Orchestration, a 1,000-page book on theory, widely used among Japanese composers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Ifukube

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Dmitry Yablonsky (born 1962 in Moscow) is a Russian classical cellist and conductor. His mother is famed pianist Oxana Yablonskaya. Yablonsky was educated at the Juilliard School of Music and Yale University. Among his teachers are Lorne Munroe, Aldo Parisot, Zara Nelsova and Otto Werner Muller. For several years Yablonsky has been Principal Guest Conductor of Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra and has conducted many orchestras all over the world. He has made more than 70 recordings as conductor and cellist for Naxos, Erato-Warner, Chandos, Belair Music, Sonora, Connoisseur Society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Yablonsky

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