from C-t.com review: fun music by a Japanese composer

[barry guerrero]

I got this disc before David, and I love it. Here's why    .      .      . 




ISOTARO SUGATA
Symphonic Overture; Peaceful Dance of Two Dragons; The Rhythm of Life; Dancing Girl in the Orient
Kanagawa Philharmonic Orchestra

Kazuhiko Komatsu

Naxos- 8.570319(CD)
No Reference Recording

Listen to samples on Naxos.com

    rating

    This disc is a riot. Isotaro Sugata (1907-52) is a composer of such deliberate, shameless derivativeness that these very serious and often lovely works veer dangerously (and wonderfully) close to parody. The Symphonic Overture begins with Respighi in modal mode, then moves to a series of cribs from Hindemith's Mathis der Maler. It ends with the climax of that work's first movement grafted onto the brass chorale that closes the finale. Both Peaceful Dance of Two Dragons and The Rhythm of Life shuffle Stravinsky's Firebird, Petrushka, Rite of Spring, and Song of the Nightingale like a pack of cards (only with Japanese folk melodies, of course). It's very disorienting, hearing the introduction to Part Two of The Rite suddenly give way to the fourth tableau of Petrushka, and so forth. Dancing Girl in the Orient could be by any Russian composer from Rimsky-Korsakov to Ippolitov-Ivanov. People unfamiliar with Sugata's models can enjoy this colorful music on its own terms, but if you know the above-cited pieces at all well, that's when the fun really starts. The performances sound very good, though the engineering is just a touch boxy in the treble. Still, I wouldn't miss this disc for anything. It proves that imitation surely is the sincerest form of flattery.

    --David Hurwitz