Presented by Adelaide Festival Centre
Reviewed Tuesday 13th September 2011
http://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/KOAN.aspx?showid=77
Venue: Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre, King William Road, Adelaide
Season: Ended
Duration: 1hrs 45min
The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra's concertmaster, Natsuko Yoshimoto, has put together a concert of music, mostly written by Japanese composers, featuring Japanese shakuhachi master, Akikaza Nakamura, percussionist, Claire Edwardes, and pianist, Bernadette Harvey.
A koan is an unfathomable statement or unanswerable question, when using only the conscious mind and normal logic, that is used as a focus in the Rinzai school of Zen Buddhist meditation. It is only when the conscious mind has exhausted all possibilities that the person meditating can begin to solve the problem. The answer to a koan comes from the subconscious mind, through enlightenment. There are many of them and one of the best known to the western world is the question, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” It is only one who is already enlightened, a teacher or Roshi, who can say if the student's eventual individual response shows real enlightenment.
The concert began, after an introduction from Natsuko Yoshimoto, with a traditional Zen meditation piece for solo shakuhachi, Nesting of Cranes. Akikaza Nakamura first explained the story behind the piece and demonstrated the sounds he would make on the shakuhachi to represent the two cranes who arrive to nest and to represent their offspring. He then played this wonderfully evocative piece, showing the enormous capabilities of the instrument in the hands of a great master. It also had a meditative effect, with the audience silent and still throughout. This was a perfect start to the evening.
The next four pieces were by three Japanese composers and an American composer of Japanese descent, written between 1979 and 2000, beginning with Toshio Hosokawa's Vertical Time Study III for violin and piano (1994). Born in 1955 in Hiroshima this famous Japanese composer went to Berlin in his twenties, where he studied with the exiled Korean composer, Isang Yun, from where the European post war influence in his music came, coupled with the eastern feel in his music, drawing on the Gagaku music of the Japanese court. The focus in this work is on the individual timbre of each note and, especially, the importance of the silences. He describes it as being like calligraphy, where the violin is the brush and the piano the canvas. Yoshimoto and Harvey were clearly of one mind in their playing of this piece. Hosokawa's score calls for the violin to produce a vast range of sounds with techniques such as playing very close to the bridge to produce a brittle tone, bouncing the bow across the strings and much more. Yoshimoto's use of dynamics as well as these difficult technical requirements was superb and Harvey's accompaniment was extremely sympathetic.
Joji Yuasa's Mai Bataraki from A Ritual for Delphi, for shakuhachi and percussion (1979) was next. Born in Koriyama in 1929, Yuasa is a self taught composer who has a prolific output. Planning to study medicine, he switched to being a full time musician after meeting the composer, Toru Takemitsu, in 1952. Mai bataraki is a term from Noh theatre referring to section of dance performance with deities, dragon gods or goblins performing to flute and percussion accompaniment. In Noh theatre, of course, the flute would be a nohkan, a high pitched transverse flute, rather than the end blown shakuhachi. Takemitsu, again, showed enormous delicacy in his playing with Edwardes countering with a range of percussion from a large tam tam (gong) through a bank of tuned gongs and down to a range of variously sized temple blocks. They evoked the traditional music of the noh performances but took a new perspective on this ancient art form in a riveting performance.
Kenji Bunch's Paraphraseology for violin and marimba 2000 brought Yoshimoto and Edwardes together to explores this most recent of the four works, written by the youngest composer. Born in 1973, American composer/violinist, Kenji Bunch was soon labelled by the New York Times as “a composer to watch”. The use of the marimba, originally a chromatic Guatemalan instrument developed from an earlier diatonic Mayan version, is an interesting choice as a duo with violin. The two blend superbly, particularly with these two very fine performers. Jazz vibraphonist, Gary Burton, developed the four mallet technique of playing and this quickly spread to the other keyboard percussion instruments, allowing more pianistic playing which, with the ability to play chords as well as melody, is what makes it work so well in this piece. The marimba is an expressive instrument with a wide dynamic range and thus proves a fine complement to a violin, which is probably the most expressive instrument in the orchestra. Yoshimoto and Edwardes immediately established a close rapport in this piece that enabled the beauty of the work to take centre place.
Toru Takemitsu's Rain Tree Sketch II, 'in memoriam Olivier Messiaen', for piano (1992) was the last of the four works. Because of time constraints Rain Tree Sketch I was unfortunately omitted from the advertised programme. Takemitsu (1930-1996) was largely self taught and was influenced by a wide range of music, including jazz, popular music and, in particular, the works of Claude Debussy and Olivier Messiaen, whom he honours with this work. The beautifully spare writing in this piece enables every note to demand attention and Messiaen's influence can be clearly felt, with the occasional hints of Debussy's compositional techniques. Harvey's delicate touch and sensitivity breathed life into this marvellous three section work, bringing out all of the subtlety, delicacy of dynamics, and rich harmonic colours.
James Cuddeford was commissioned to compose the final piece of the evening especially for this OzAsia concert. Written to include all four musicians it uses the full resources of the ensemble by including solos, various combinations, and full ensemble passages. Koan III is, as the name suggests, the third in a series that he is writing under that title. In thirteen sections, played without a pause, it included various spatial relationships by having the violin and shakuhachi playing at different places on the stage, coming in close to stand either side of the piano by the close of the work. This was a tremendous piece to finish with, exploring Asian tonalities and blending contemporary techniques to create an intricate and fascinating series of ideas.
Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Arts Editor, Glam Adelaide.
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