Matsumura - Symphony nr. 1

I am starting to realise that the ocean of unreconnoitered repertoire is probably vaster than I will ever be able to cover. Amazing, particularly given the fact that only a year ago I had the impression that I'd had it all. But it annoyed me that I seemed to turn into circles - Beethoven, Mahler, Bruckner, Sibelius, Nielsen, Shostakovich, a few others - and this prompted me to start to listen in 'project mode'. This was a concious effort to broaden my repertoire and deepen my listening experience. This led to the blog and now I'm penetrating deep into unfamiliar terrain. The Bartok campaign has certainly given me a much more differentiated picture of the 20th century musical landscape.

YouTube has some amazing resources for amateurs of classical music. The channel fed by Newmusic XX is a treasure trove for lovers of the 20th century musical avant garde. Max Ridgway is an American music teacher, graduate from Berklee College of Music, and faculty at Northwestern Oklahoma State University (guitar, music appreciation). I was browsing the rich catalogue on offering when I was intrigued by a symphony written by a, for me, completely unknown Japanese composer, Teizo Matsumura (1929-2007). His First Symphony (1965) proved to be a compelling work: brash, primitivist and propelled forward by a volcanic energy, but also disquietingly mysterious. I seem to hear some Japanese fingerprints but the idiom orients itself mainly to the Western avant garde. The language is dense and expressionistic, the scoring colourful and compact, with the brass very often unisono in full force supported by manic percussion. It reminds me somewhat of the Sacre, but then maybe with a more urban, post-industrial slant. There is very beautiful slow music too, however, such as the first movement's moody coda and the Adagio that follows immediately upon it (with a beautifully meditative flute solo). Formally it is conventionally structured in three movements: Andante, Adagio, Allegro. Both first and last movements seem to be built symmetrically, revolving around central, no holds barred climaxes. All in all an accessible and thoroughly engaging work. It must be a stunning experience in the concert hall. Matsumura has also composed for film and that doesn't surprise me as he seems to have a knack for writing very clever and evocative music.

The recording struck me as very accomplished and it took me a moment to find out where it came from. Apparently this is a Naxos album, taped in 2006 by the Irish RTE National Symphony Orchestra under Takuo Yuasa and issued only in Japan in a 'Japanese Classics' Series. It is, however, available for download and the CD version is planned to be available by June 2011. The album contains Matsumura's two symphonies and a work that is ominously titled To the night of Gethsemane. Otherwise there is precious little work of Matsumura available on CD. Which is no doubt a shame considering his fairly extensive catalogue of works in a variety of genres. Certainly an interesting discovery to which I will return.