Akio Yashiro - Quatuor à cordes (1955)
1. Adagio ma non troppo
2. Prestissimo, un poco misterioso ma scherzando
3. Andante espressivo
4. Allegro giocoso
Lotus String Quartet:
Sachiko Kobayashi, violin.
Maki Mogitate, violin.
Tomoko Yamasaki, viola.
Chihiro Saito, violincello.
Akio Yashiro (1929-1976)
Sonate pour piano (1961).
Tomiko Tahara, pianoforte.
I. Agitato
II. Toccata
III. Theme et Variations
Symphony, for large orchestra (1958).
Japan Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra diretta da Akeo Watanabe. 17 Novembre 1981.
I. Prelude. Adagio
II. Scherzo. Vivace
III. Lento
IV. Adagio.
Symphony (1958)
Conductor: Takuo Yuasa
Ulster Orchestra
I. Prelude: Adagio - Moderato [0:00]
II. Scherzo: Vivace [7:22]
III. Lento [11:13]
IV. Adagio - Allegro energico [23:54]
A large-scale orchestral work by Japanese composer Akio Yashiro (1929-1976), a student of Saburo Moroi and Qunihico Hashimoto. Although he was solidly situated in the Japanese modernist school of composers, Yashiro was highly skeptical of avant-garde trends in music and grounded his music in somewhat more traditional forms, drawing inspiration from figures such as Beethoven, Dukas and Messiaen. When John Cage visited Japan in 1962, Yashiro repeatedly heckled his performance, saying, "This is no music!" He had earned high praise from Messiaen and Florent Schmitt as a student at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, and he became widely recognized as one of the leading Japanese composers. However, Yashiro's perfectionism hindered his productivity over the course of his career, so that his oeuvre remained quite small. The 1958 Symphony was commissioned by the Japan Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra. It consists of four nearly-continuous movements, which are carefully united by a few motifs, most notably a three note B-F-F sharp pattern and the B-F or B flat-F intervals. Some of the first-movement material was taken from an unfinished work that Yashiro began composing as a student on the subject of Oscar Wilde's Salome.
Akio Yashiro Piano Concerto, click here
Akio Yashiro: Symphony, Piano Concerto and Cello Concerto, click here
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| Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, Tokyo, Japan (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
he Department of Composition, he studied composition under Hashimoto Kunihiko, Ikeuchi Yujiro, and Ifukube Akira, and piano under Toyomasu Noboru, Leonid Kreutzer, and Kawakami Kiyo. He finished the course in 1949 and completed graduate courses in 1951.
He then went to Europe with Mayuzumi Toshiro to study abroad with a French governmental fellowship at Paris Conservatorie. There he learned composition and orchestration from Olivier Messiaen, Tony Oban, and Nadia Boulanger. He received the first prize in harmony and made good grades in each course: Accompany with Piano, Counterpoint, and Fugue. He returned home in 1956.
In 1957, String Quartet, which he wrote while studying abroad, was premiered successfully in Japan, and Yashiro received the Eighth Mainichi Music Prize for it. In the same year, he was selected as the first commissioned composer of the Japan Philharmonic Series, a series of works by Japanese composers founded by Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, and he wrote Symphonie pour grande orchestre (first performance conducted by Watanabe Akio on June of 1958). He received both the Sixteenth Otaka Prize and the Twenty-first National Art Festival Award in 1968 for his Piano Concerto (1964-1967) which was commissioned by NHK. Yashiro also composed Suite classique pour piano a 4 mains in 1951, Symphonic Pieces in 1951, Sonate pour piano in 1961, and Christmas Carol in 1964. He wrote music for movies, broadcasts, and stages as well.
In 1968 Akio Yashiro was inaugurated as an assistant professor at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, and he was promoted to professor in 1974.
