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Noriko Ogawa - Yoshihiro Kanno: Light, Water, Rainbow... (2015)

Posted By: Designol
Noriko Ogawa - Yoshihiro Kanno: Light, Water, Rainbow... (2015)

Noriko Ogawa - Yoshihiro Kanno: Light, Water, Rainbow… (2015)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 249 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 175 Mb | Artwork included
Classical, Contemporary | Label: BIS | # BIS-SACD-2075 | Time: 01:12:09

Born in 1953, Yoshihiro Kanno studied at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music and is currently a professor at Waseda University's Department of Intermedia Arts and Science. In his compositions he bases himself on three idioms: Western instrumental music, Japanese traditional instruments, and computer music. Combining these various elements freely, he creates scores for Japanese instruments and computer as well as for Western and Japanese instruments, such as the recent work Himiko – Memories of the Sun Goddess which fuses Western classical music and Japanese traditional music with Kabuki and Japanese classical dance. The pianist Noriko Ogawa, acclaimed for a wide-ranging discography comprising music by composers from Mozart and Debussy to Takemitsu and Graham Fitkin, is a champion of Kanno's music and has commissioned three of the works on the present disc, the so-called 'Particle of Piano' series. In each work, the pianist is required also to create sounds on a Japanese instrument, respectively a small iron wind chime, a pair of metal chopsticks made of the same steel as the fabled samurai swords, and a set of metal bells used in Kabuki performances. All three of these possess particular acoustical traits which affect how their sounds interact with that of the piano. The 'Particle series' is framed by two works which both incorporate computerized sounds – in the case of the opening Angel's Ladder it is the sound of the piano itself which at crucial points is processed, and in Lunar Rainbow it is that of a toy piano.The disc closes with the brief Prelude for Angel, composed in 1985 for the animated film Angel’s Egg (Tenshi no tamago) by Mamoru Oshii.

When Bis announced the release of this CD, label head Robert von Bahr confessed, in the email he sent to customers presenting it, that he found it to be difficult music. With this in mind, I was a bit sceptical when I received the CD from MusicWeb International. Bis has a number of recordings that could qualify as “difficult”, by composers such as Ligeti, Pettersson and Sorabji. Could this recording be more “difficult” than the works of those composers?

I listened to this disc with interest, the first time, waiting for the difficult bits. I was expecting some sort of neo-Ivesian/Cowellesque recording with tone clusters, prepared piano and micro-tonal tunings. Well, one man’s “difficult” is another man’s melodic and I found these works to be quite interesting. I would say that it’s not easy music to get into but I would hesitate to call it “difficult”.

This music is certainly quirky. The first work, The Remains of the Light III for piano and computer, uses sounds processed with a ring modulator, which makes the notes, at time, sound as though they were twisted and then played underwater. Aside from the odd sounds that come and go – the computer is not “playing” all the time – this is a fairly melodic, modern piano piece. There are hints of Takemitsu, to whom this piece was an homage, as well as Debussy and the minimalists but it’s not an atonal, serialist work … far from it.

The second piece, A Particle of Light, is for piano and Nambu bell. This is the kind of hanging bell found in a wind chime. I have to say that I barely hear the Nambu bell. The liner-notes say that “the work begins with the mysterious sound of the Nambu bell enveloping the musical sound of the piano.” In fact, it is all but unnoticeable, being at a frequency that my age renders hard to capture. Only by turning the volume up very loud did I clearly hear its soft sound. Nevertheless, this is a mysterious piece, alternating between light and thunder, providing an interesting dialogue through conflicting rhythms between the left and right hands.

A Particle of Water, which follows, is for piano and Myochin hibashi, or metal chopsticks. This piece attempts to recreate the famous haiku by Bashō:

The ancient pond
A frog leaps in
The sound of the water

The work follows on the previous piece, starting out with similar melodic and rhythmic structures. The piano wanders, as if in search of a melody, moving up and down the keyboard, reaching the highest notes, then starting again. Attempting to follow the movement of the frog’s ripples in the pond, the pianist plays long, aqueous runs on the keyboard, often with the left and right hands flowing in opposite directions. This piece is, in some ways, less musical than its predecessor, ending up being mostly those fast runs along the keyboard. The tone of the music changes late in the work, becoming angry and aggressive, more Beethovenian, with many raucous runs up and down the keyboard. At times, the pianist can be heard playing simultaneously in the lowest and highest registers. While I do hear the chopsticks I find that they don't add much to the music.

Next is A Particle of Rainbow for piano and Kabuki Orgel, which is a set of five metal bowls on a wooden base. Continuing from the previous piece’s combination of light and aggressive figures, this work has more of a chordal structure behind the melodies, and sounds a bit more romantic. It continues the runs up and down the keyboard, but now integrated into more classical-sounding motifs.

Lunar Rainbow for piano, toy piano and computer reprises the ring modulator from the first piece, and follows on with similar forms and motifs. I find the ring modulator to be annoying enough to want to skip this track, and the first, and just focus on the three “Particle” pieces, which work well together as a unit. Lunar Rainbow just contains aimless runs up and down the keyboard with little structure.

Only one of the works, the short prelude at the end of the disc, is described as “for piano”. Prelude for Angel begins with a slow, haunting tone in a minor key, somewhat like music by Harold Budd. Its simple melody sports a brief crescendo, as it is invaded by chromaticism, then it returns to the melancholic opening melody. It is an attractive piece, somewhat different from the rest of the album.

All in all, I wouldn’t call this a “difficult” recording, but I would say that it’s not for everyone. If you leave out the two pieces with the ring modulator, there is still a very interesting three-piece work in the middle, with an attractive closing prelude. As a fan of Takemitsu, I certainly detect the influence of this composer, and I find that Yoshiro Kanno has much to say for himself. I look forward to hearing more music by this composer.

Review by Kirk McElhearn, Musicweb-International.com


There’s a familiar scale with eight tones (C-D flat-E flat-E natural-F sharp-G-A-B flat) that Scriabin often used. Yoshihiro Kanno employs it to the point where you can’t discern any significant distinctions between the five long piano works presented on this disc. They chiefly differ in that each piece has the pianist double on either a traditional Japanese instrument or play along with computer-generated sounds.

While the music is often static and overly long for what it has to say, the gorgeous sonorities, bold gestures and ingenious deployment of registers compensate and grab your attention. For example, A Particle of Light features kaleidoscopic scales moving at different tempi in each hand. A Particle of Rainbow concludes with massive two-handed chords and long, ecstatic trills. A toy piano provides effective melodic reinforcement in parts of Lunar Rainbow. Similar piano-writing fills up the six minutes of Angel’s Ladder. At this juncture the computer processing kicks in, expanding the piano sonorities and bending pitches. Kanno catches you off-guard when he tosses in the opening measures of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde Prelude, yet he soon returns to eight-note scale rhapsodising, sugar-coated with quasi spaceship effects.

Ironically, the shortest piece, Prelude for Angel, proves Kanno’s strongest offering. It begins with disarming melodic simplicity, then becomes dark and murky, building up to a shattering climax before returning to its gentle point of origin. No doubt that BIS’s luscious multichannel sound and Noriko Ogawa’s astonishingly proficient and colourful pianism make a better case for Kanno’s aesthetic than a 250-word review.

Review by Jed Distler, Gramophone


Noriko Ogawa - Yoshihiro Kanno: Light, Water, Rainbow... (2015)



Noriko Ogawa - Yoshihiro Kanno: Light, Water, Rainbow... (2015)



Tracklist:

01. The Remains of the Light III, 'Angel's Ladder' (19:17)
02. A Particle of Light (13:17)
03. A Particle of Water (13:15)
04. A Particle of Rainbow (12:01)
05. Lunar Rainbow (10:53)
06. Prelude for Angel (03:25)


Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011

EAC extraction logfile from 20. July 2015, 1:49

Noriko Ogawa / Kanno - Light, Water, Rainbow…

Used drive : HL-DT-STDVDRAM GU70N Adapter: 0 ID: 0

Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No

Read offset correction : 48
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000

Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 128 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\Flac\flac.exe
Additional command line options : -V -8 -T "Date=%year%" -T "Genre=%genre%" %source%


TOC of the extracted CD

Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 19:17.12 | 0 | 86786
2 | 19:17.12 | 13:17.21 | 86787 | 146582
3 | 32:34.33 | 13:15.30 | 146583 | 206237
4 | 45:49.63 | 12:01.34 | 206238 | 260346
5 | 57:51.22 | 10:53.21 | 260347 | 309342
6 | 68:44.43 | 3:25.32 | 309343 | 324749


Range status and errors

Selected range

Filename C:\temp\BIS-SACD-2075 - Yoshihiro Kanno - Light, Water, Rainbow\Kanno - Light, Water, Rainbow.wav

Peak level 95.1 %
Extraction speed 2.3 X
Range quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 647601BB
Copy CRC 647601BB
Copy OK

No errors occurred


AccurateRip summary

Track 1 accurately ripped (confidence 1) [6532F648] (AR v2)
Track 2 accurately ripped (confidence 1) [B255278F] (AR v2)
Track 3 accurately ripped (confidence 1) [951D7BD4] (AR v2)
Track 4 accurately ripped (confidence 1) [F391D65E] (AR v2)
Track 5 accurately ripped (confidence 1) [6A7CB1DC] (AR v2)
Track 6 accurately ripped (confidence 1) [5CF4F20F] (AR v2)

All tracks accurately ripped

End of status report

==== Log checksum CC18AA7D3DA83FBD1CA9350207E39363A1A8CA8A063CFC8159B740F81F909CD9 ====

foobar2000 1.2 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1
log date: 2016-04-25 12:58:19

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Analyzed: Noriko Ogawa / Kanno - Light, Water, Rainbow…
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

DR Peak RMS Duration Track
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
DR13 -1.70 dB -20.61 dB 19:17 01-The Remains of the Light III, 'Angel's Ladder'
DR14 -1.71 dB -23.85 dB 13:17 02-A Particle of Light
DR13 -0.43 dB -22.60 dB 13:15 03-A Particle of Water
DR16 -0.59 dB -24.08 dB 12:01 04-A Particle of Rainbow
DR15 -0.68 dB -25.15 dB 10:53 05-Lunar Rainbow
DR16 -4.92 dB -29.86 dB 3:25 06-Prelude for Angel
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Number of tracks: 6
Official DR value: DR14

Samplerate: 44100 Hz
Channels: 2
Bits per sample: 16
Bitrate: 459 kbps
Codec: FLAC
================================================================================

Noriko Ogawa - Yoshihiro Kanno: Light, Water, Rainbow... (2015)

All thanks to original releaser

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