Toshiro Mayuzumi: Pieces for Prepared Piano and Strings (Benjamin Owen, piano), Samsara (Symphonic Poem), Essay for String Orchestra. The Louisville Orchestra, Robert Whitney, Akira Endo (in Essay). First Edition Music FECD-0030 (2004) barcode 809157003021
Pieces recorded IV.63, Samsara recorded 11.V.66, Essay recorded 4.XI.80, in Louisville, venues not indicated
The impossibly short timing has not prevented ths disc from becoming a rarity item
Originally posted on Amazon.com, 10 May 2008
When First Edition Music, a label of the Santa Fe Music Group, acquired the rights to the Louisville catalog in the learly 2000s, they embraced the laudable task of reissuing the complete Louisville recordings (for all the details on this see my Louisville CD-discography, link will open a new tab). Sadly, however, some of their offers where so short as to be self-defeating propositions really, and, after a few others (FECD-0008 George Crumb, FECD-0014 Lou Harrison, FECD-0036 Gian Francesco Malipiero, FECD-0015 Alberto Ginastera, FECD-0035 Ernst Toch – links will open new tabs to my reviews), this Mayuzumi disc is a case in point: a TT of 39:48 simply won’t do, even if the music was outstanding. Obviously First Edition Music gave precedence to program coherence over timing, and these scanty 40- minutes are indeed all the Mayuzumi they ever recorded. But surely, with a little imagination, they could have come up with a coherent coupling. Not that they had many other Japanese composers in their catalog that would have made an obvious pairing – in fact they had none (for all their involvement in 20th Century music the Louiville Orchestra never recorded any Takemitsu for instance). But they could have picked the two pieces by Paul Chihara – an American composer but of Japanese descent – that the orchestra recorded: his Saxophone Concerto and Forest Music. But these two pieces were licensed to CRI (CRI CD 815 barcode 090438081528), so maybe First Edition Music couldn’t use them. Still, staying in the Far-East, I think Chou Wen-chung (American composer of Chinese descent, and a famous Varèse protégé and advocate) would have been a great choice, with his pieces “All In The Spring Wind” (1953), “And the Fallen Petals” (1956), “Soliloquy of a Bhiksuni” for trumpet, brass and percussion (1958). So far these pieces are un-reissued [A post-script from 2025: they are available as downloads or on streaming]. Now I believe that First Edition Music has folded (their website is inaccessible and they do not respond to e-mails), before being able to complete the mammoth task of reissuing the complete Louisville catalog, so we are left only with our regrets – and the option of scouting for the relevant LPs [An addendum from 2025: they resumed operations until the early 2010s, but published the Louisville recordings only in the form of downloads or streaming – and didn’t entirely complete the task of reissuing the entire Louisville catalog].
Now, after venting my frustration, I do owe it to the truth to confess that, in the case of this specific Mayuzumi disc, timing probably doesn’t matter: I’ve been doing a thorough survey of the discs from First Edition Music’s Louisville collection and they have been fairly easy to find, at very affordable prices, but this Mayuzumi disc has proved to be the most difficult one to obtain. In fact, I haven’t yet: I’ve borrowed this copy from a friend. My hint is that the Japanese collectors have massively snatched it, making it a super-rare item and fodder for the Internet vultures who will demand unreasonable prices for it.
An the music? In fact it is quite good, without being outstandingly original. Most original I find are the (three) Pieces for Prepared Piano and Strings from 1957. Their terseness and the sonorities of the prepared piano liken them to a mixture of Cage and Webern. 9:29 and it is over.
Though composed five years later, the 20-minute symphonic poem Samsara seems to me to mark a stylistic step back: it is very balletic and develops to great dramatic intensity, with nice atmospheric orchestral colors that brought back to mind Roussel’s ballets (Spider’s Feast), Koechlin’s evocative orchestral pieces (The Jungle Book) or Villa Lobos’ Amazonian pieces, and, in some string tremolos full of pent-up menace, Schoenberg’s Accompaniment Music for an Imaginary Film. Some themes sound like Varèse but the treatment is very different, and some other passages are strongly smacking of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre. There is also a short rhythmic passage at 12:35 which fleetingly evokes Messiaen’s birds. If you think I am implying that there is nothing in Samsara that you haven’t heard before – you are right: that is what I am implying. There is, however, a nice passage for percussion alone at 14:45. It is an entertaining piece, not ground-breaking, not radical. There is another recording, by the Hong-Kong PO under Yoshikazu Fukumura – an early Hong Kong/Marco Polo release, before their Naxos-based success (8.220297 barcode 4891030202979 or 730099229722). Although Whitney makes a circa 2-minute cut (at 9:15), I prefer his version, if only because the Louisville 1966 recording has significantly more vivid presence than the 1984 Marco Polo: it does make a difference in impact.
I find Essay for String Orchestra from a year later more interesting. It is again a short piece (10:33), very atmospheric, making use of some of the advanced string techniques of its days (many glissandos), going for color and atmosphere like the works written by Penderecki or Ligeti in those years rather than melody like, say, Barber, and also very gentle in mood: in it the composer sought “to express a sort of Oriental tranquility of stillness”.
Good sound from the recordings from respectively 1963, 1966 and 1980. The booklet nicely reproduces a typescript letter from Mayuzumi to Robert Whitney, thanking him for the recording of the Pieces for Prepared Piano. For collector’s interest, the Pieces for Prepared Piano were originally released on Louisville LS 636 with Bloch’s Proclamation for Trumpet (not reissued) and Frank Martin’s Violin Concerto (now on FECD-0020 with Martin’s Cello Concerto, barcode 809157000204), Samsara was on LOU 666 with Roy Harris’ Epilogue to Profiles in Courage: JFK (now on Albany First Edition Encores TROY027-2, link to my review) and Gunther Schuller’s Dramatic Overture (not reissued), and Essay came on LS-777 with Duke Ellington’s The River (not reissued).
Now I have to return this disc to my friend. A pity [and a postscript from 2025: I finally found it last May for ten dollars, so now it can gather dust on my shelf rather than on someone else’s).