Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa offers a set of pieces that outline his own style of avant-Japonoiserie. There’s wax, there’s wane, ebb, flow, sturm, and drang, but little more, not enough to turn these orchestral washes into pieces. The sonic impulse for each work is clear enough: these are truly compositional (as opposed to purely philosophical) ideas, which the composer fails to develop. And it is always slow–there isn’t a single note of fast music on this disc. The two concertos should not be labeled as such, for there is no sense of play between soloist and orchestra: in Voyage I the fiddle does little more than add harmonics to the texture, more obbligato than solo. The same is true of the Konzert für Saxophon und Orchester (though there is one stunning moment of orchestration about five minutes into it, involving a high, pianissimo saxophone, string harmonics, and pulsing flutes, that is worth the whole piece, maybe even the whole disc).
Performances are stellar: Kyoko Kawamura handles Koto-uta well, and has the perfect voice for it, and both soloists presumably play well on their respective concertos–but in music this directionless it’s difficult to tell. The orchestral sound is tense and full, partly due to conductors Peter Rundel and Ken Takaseki, partly due to the fantastic, closely nuanced sound we have come to expect from the Kairos label.
