Lucena - Forest Bathing - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Album Tracks 1. Iraq to Aspania 2. My Star 3. Romance 4. Iraqi Bayat 5. Joy 6. Summertime Dream 7. Iraqi Swing 8. Sparrow 9. Fog El-Nakhal 10. Old Gypsy Dance 11. Babylonian Gardens

Once the West and Japan were not familiar with one another. But today, in the 21st century, the two worlds which are so very different can come a little closer to each other. We learn, wonder, and discover different cultures, lifestyles, nature, architecture, images and sounds. Fumio Yasuda's music comes from modern Japan, which already opened up to the West in the 18th century. Yasuda studied classical music with a preference for Karl Amadeus Hartmann. From childhood he grew up with Western pop and jazz music, yet was still deeply rooted in the Japanese tradition. Time, space, and infinity play an important role in his music. In his scores there are no pause signs like in Western music, but signs of silence between lyrical, deeply poetic tones and chords that tell stories about Japanese landscapes, rain, forests, fog, longings and eternity. Yasuda works in a deep musical understanding with Joachim Badenhorst, Nobuyoshi Ino and Akimuse. His gentle piano sounds unite with the sounds of the clarinet, the plucked bass strings, and the tender voice of Akimuse.

From Arturo Toscanini and Sir John Barbirolli to Riccardo Muti and Antonio Pappano in our own time, Italian-heritage performers have often brought special qualities of sympathy and understanding to Edward Elgar's (1857-1934) music. Now comes a new recording made in the 'boot' of southern Italy, lending Mediterranean warmth and passion to a trio of Elgarian masterpieces. The Sicilian-born cellist Giovanni Sollima has made well-received albums for Brilliant Classics of music by Offenbach (94475) and by his father Eliodoro Sollima (96287). His latest recording, made at the Teatro Politeama in the one-time 'lace capital' of Europe, Catanzaro, illuminates one of the core works of the cello literature with an affecting sense of line and sensitivity to the melancholy introversion which colors every bar of the Concerto composed by Elgar in the wake of the First World War. Twenty years earlier, Elgar's reputation was secured with audiences across Europe and America through the whirlwind success of his InchEnigmaInch Variations. The stoic beauty of 'Nimrod', the gentle wit of 'Dorabella' and the nervous excitement and pride of the autobiographical finale spoke directly to listeners who would never know the composer or his 'friends pictured within'. The agitated, impassioned voice of Elgar in the Variations belonged to it's end-of-Empire time and place, orchestrated with a mastery which would soon draw the admiration of Richard Strauss and many more musicians on the other side of the English Channel. Even that quintessential expression of Englishness, the first of five marches which Elgar collected under the Shakesperean banner of InchPomp and CircumstanceInch and later repurposed to set 'Land of Hope and Glory' for the finale of his Coronation Ode, won the composer standing ovations when he conducted it in concerts across mainland Europe. Under the affectionate baton of their m