VA - Viola Space Japan, 10th Anniversary (2003) 2CDs

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VA - Viola Space Japan, 10th Anniversary (2003) 2CDs

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The virtuoso violist Nobuko Imai founded Tokyo's Viola Space festival in 1992, and ten years later BIS released this two-disc set featuring a selection of the modern repertoire (nearly 150 pieces) featured there. There are solos, duets and ensemble pieces by Hosokawa, Penderecki, Kurtág, Nørgård, Porter, Partos, Ligeti, Benjamin, Hayashi and Schnittke, all of which of couse feature viola. Not everything here interests me, so I'll review only the works that do.

Alfred Schnittke's Concerto for Three for violin, viola, cello and strings (1994) was one of the Russian composer's last works before his third stroke did him in almost completely. Like all of his music from this era, this is a bleak piece with a very few voices playing extremely sparse lines; the three soloists don't even play all at once until the end. The role of the ensemble is limited throughout, and the piano appears only once, when a player comes forth from among the audience and pounds a single chord to end the piece. That's not to say there is no, drama, however. While I don't care much for the symphonies written at this time (the 6th through the 8th) – horrors of laboured breathing that painfully go on and on – I find this concerto compelling. The final movement has the players furiously sawing away at an ostinato that is one of the most memorable Schnittke moments for me.

Here Schnittke's Concerto for Three is played by Yashushi Toyoshima (violin), Masao Kawasaki (viola) and Noburu Kamimura (cello) with the Toho Gakuen orchestra conducted by Koichiro Harada. At the end of the piece, they move attacca into "Minuet", a short ditty that Schnittke wrote as an encore piece for the work. Now, the must-have recording of this music is the performance by the dedicatees – Kremer, Bashmet and Rostropovich – on an EMI disc. However, there's not much difference between the two available recordings.

George Benjamin's "Viola, Viola" (1996) is, as its title suggests, a duo for two violas, here performed by Sachiko Suda and Shota Yanase. "My desire," writes Benjamin, "was to make you imagine, if you close your eyes, that there's a string ensemble on the platform." And indeed, its amazing what range of sounds that Benjamin pulls out of just two puny string instruments over the course of this ten-minute piece. This performance is rather too aggressive for my tastes, I prefer the Nimbus disc where Tabea Zimmerman and Antoine Tamesit perform.

In 1992 Per Nørgård wrote two pieces for Nobuko Imai, which she performs here. The sonata "The Secret Melody" has been recorded twice in its arrangement for violin (on Chandos and Dacapo), but it's nice to have the viola original here. In each of the five movements of this piece, a melody asserts itself which is subsequently revealed to be part of an even larger melody. The virtuoso fourth movement, with rapidly played harmonics, is hands-down the most beautiful thing on this two-disc set.

Toshio Hosokawa is the most prominent Japanese composer of our time. "Voyage VI" for viola and strings (2002) is one of a series of concertos that symbolize the relationship between man and the universe (whether external or internal). In spite of his Japanese origins, I think that Hosokawa's language is most similar to the European modernist Michael Jarrell, but the consistently dramatic interaction here between soloist and strings should make "Voyage VI" widely accessible.

Finally, György Ligeti's Viola Sonata (1991-94) is one of the most traditional-sound works that the composer wrote in his mature career, as each movement dwells on Balkan or Baroque soundworlds. However, the joining of these six movements into a single work is a postmodernist act. It's lovely music and a showcase for the violist, but I do miss the humour characteristic of most of Ligeti's output. Now, the Viola Sonata has already been recorded by dedicatee Tabea Zimmermann in Sony's Ligeti Edition, which the composer considered definitive recordings. It's therefore hard to recommend this recording by Nobuko Imai, although it's a competent one.

Review by Christopher Culver

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VA - Viola Space Japan, 10th Anniversary (2003) 2CDs

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VA - Viola Space Japan, 10th Anniversary (2003) 2CDs

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VA - Viola Space Japan, 10th Anniversary (2003) 2CDs

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