Kunihiko Hashimoto - Symphony No. 2; Three Wasan (Takuo Yuasa)

Information

Composer: Kunihiko Hashimoto

• Symphony No. 2 in F major
• 3 Wasan
• Scherzo con sentimento

Akiya Fukushima, baritone

Tokyo Geidai Philharmonia

Takuo Yuasa, conductor

Date: 2016

Label: Naxos Japan

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Review

Western-style music existed in Japan before World War II but was not exactly common; the composer under examination here, Qunihico (or Kunihico) Hashimoto, was largely self-taught in the 1920s. In the 1930s he studied in Vienna with Egon Wellesz and briefly in Los Angeles with Arnold Schoenberg, but there is little of their influence to be heard in the music here. The Symphony No. 2 was composed in 1947 in response to a commission for a work to celebrate Japan's new constitution, but he seems to have begun the work during the war, which would make it a very different kind of celebration. It doesn't matter much, for the work is in the vein of Russian symphonic music of the late 19th century, with Japanese-inflected melodies substituted for the Russian ones. More effective are the Three Wasan, composed in 1948 and thus one of the last works completed by Hashimoto before his death from stomach cancer the following spring. Wasan are Buddhist chants in a fixed poetic form, and here the balance between Western orchestral song and melodic shapes of a non-Western sort is very keenly struck, with baritone Akiya Fukushima matching that balance with an unusual vocal timbre. These are wonderful short lyrical songs. The final Scherzo con sentimento is a youthful work, slight but somehow conveying the sense of discovery that must have accompanied it. The performances by the Tokyo Geidai Philharmonia under Takuo Yuasa likewise involve excitement at the rediscovery of this almost unknown music, which is of interest to those occupied with the presence of Western music in Asian countries.

-- James Manheim

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Kunihiko Hashimoto (September 14, 1904 – May 6, 1949) was among the leading Japanese composers of the first half of the 20th century. He studied violin and conducting at the Tokyo Music School in the 1920s, and later became active as a composer and arranger. In 1933 he was appointed as professor at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. Hashimoto had been living in Vienna from 1934 to 1937, studying with Egon Wellesz. He also visited United States and studied with Arnold Schoenberg in Los Angeles. His music often draws on Japanese sources, together with other European influences.

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Takuo Yuasa (born 1949) is a Japanese conductor. Yuasa was born in Osaka, Japan, where he studied piano, cello, flute, and clarinet. At age 18, he went on to study at the University of Cincinnati in the US, then continued his studies in Europe, with Hans Swarowsky in Vienna, Franco Ferrara in Siena, and Igor Markevich in France. Yuasa has conducted several of the major orchestras in Japan, and has an active career in Asia and Australia. He has held positions as chief conductor of the Gumma Symphony Orchestra, as well as principal guest conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Ulster Orchestra.

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