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

Information

Composer: Akira Ifukube

• Sinfonia Tapkaara
• Ritmica Ostinata for Piano and Orchestra
• Symphonic Fantasia No. 1

Ekaterina Saranceva, piano

Russian Philharmonic Orchestra

Dmitry Yablonsky, conductor

Date: 2005

Label: Naxos

https://www.naxos.com/CatalogueDetail/?id=8.557587

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Review

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

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Akira Ifukube (31 May 1914 – 8 February 2006) was a Japanese composer. He studied forestry at Hokkaido University and is a self-taught composer. In 1936 Ifukube's first orchestral work, Japanese Rhapsody (1935), won the Tcherepnin Prize in Paris. After this international success he went on to write several more orchestral and chamber works, and gained a teaching position at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s Ifukube was active as a composer of film and concert music, writing scores for some 300 films. From 1976 to 1987, he was president of the Tokyo College of Music.

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Dmitry Yablonsky (born 1962) is a Russian classical cellist and conductor. He studied with Lorne Munroe and Zara Nelsova at the Juilliard School of Music, and with Aldo Parisot at Yale University. As a cellist he has played in such venues as Carnegie Hall, La Scala, Moscow Great Hall, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Hall, Taiwan National Hall, Teatre Mogador, Cite de la Musique, and Louvre. For several years Yablonsky has been Principal Guest Conductor of Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra. He has made more than 70 recordings as conductor and cellist for Naxos, Erato-Warner, Chandos, Belair Music, Sonora, Connoisseur Society.

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