I’d love to visit Japan. But that’s not going to happen any time soon, so for now, I’ll just listen to Japanese music. We’ll start with one of Japan’s first major composers of the 20th century, Kosaku Yamada.

Yamada lived 1886-1965, during some of Japan’s most tumultuous history. In that time he saw his country open up to the west, go to war multiple times with just about everybody, suffer the horror of the atomic bomb twice, and have to rebuild from the total rubble of defeat in World War II. Yamada studied music in both Japan and Germany, and thus he had his feet firmly planted in the musical traditions of both countries. His music therefore reflects that fusion. He took this role, this “musical ambassadorship”, very seriously; in addition to prolifically composing almost 1600 works that reflect the fusion of Japanese and Western musical traditions, he also worked hard to introduce Western works to Japanese audiences. Yamada conducted the Japanese premieres of many important Western works.

This piece is an early work of Yamada’s. It is a symphonic poem called The Dark Gate, and it casts Japanese modalities in a brooding and impressionistic work that evokes Debussy and Ravel while still being something of its own.

When I got in my car today, WNED was playing a piece called Suffolk Suite by Doreen Carwithen. I liked what I heard, so here it is!

But wait…who was Doreen Carwithen?

Carwithen was a British composer who lived 1922-2003. She is perhaps better known, sadly, as being the second wife of composer William Alwyn; her role for him seems to have been similar to Clara Schumann’s with Robert, as it fell to Carwithen to care for and advocate on behalf of her husband’s musical legacy. But Carwithen was very much an accomplished composer in her own right, and there has been renewed focus on her work in Great Britain. The Suffolk Suite is reminiscent of the kind of pictorially pastoral work, tinged with folk sounds, of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst. Given when she wrote it, it’s likely something of an anachronistic work…but a fine and tuneful work it is, full of life.