1964年10月11日(日) 3:00pm(たぶん)
フィルハーモニック・ホール、リンカンセンター
ウィリアム・シューマン アメリカ祝典序曲
黛敏郎 弦楽のためのエッセイ
メンデルスゾーン ヴァイオリン協奏曲ホ短調Op.64
ヴァイオリン、江藤俊哉
シベリウス 交響曲第2番ニ長調Op.43
渡邉暁雄 指揮 日本フィルハーモニー交響楽団
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JAPAN PHILHARMONIC, Akeo Watanabe, conductor; Toshiyo Eto, violinist. At Philharmonic Hall.
American Festival Overture
William Schuman
Essay for Strings
Toshiro Mayuzumi
Violin Concerto in E Minor (Op. 64)
Mendelssohn
Symphony No. 2 in D (Op. 43).
Sibelius
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Japanese Philharmonic Arrives; Group, Although Young, Is Cosmopolitan; Toshiya Eto is Soloist at Lincoln Center
THE unfamiliar strains of the Japanese national anthem were heard last night in Philharmonic Hall, and on stage was the equally strange presence of 85 Japanese faces. All of which meant that the Japan Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Akeo Watanabe, was making its debut here.
Of the 88 members, only 3 are Westerners. One of them, the concertmaster, is well-known in local musical circles. He is Louis Graeler, formerly with the Symphony of the Air and the Kroll Quartet. The first cellist and first horn are also foreigners. Otherwise the players are Japanese, the great majority of them seemingly in their early thirties.
Mr. Watanabe, the conductor, is a Juilliard product. Most of the other players were trained in their homeland, and their work last night attested to the popularity of Western music in Japan that one has been reading about.
There was nothing provincial about the playing — nothing Japanese provincial, that is. It would be idle to pretend that the Japan Philharmonic is one of the world's leading ensembles, but it is an expert group and a cosmopolitan one. In the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto and the Sibelius Second Symphony, the tempos, phrasings, ensemble and entire approach were that of any corresponding orchestra anywhere in the world.
Where the relative inexperience of the orchestra is exposed it was created by Mr. Watanabe in 1956—is in such difficult pieces as the finale of the Mendelssohn Concerto. It takes a very experienced conductor and orchestra to ride along with the violinist; and in Mendelssohn's delicate scoring, the least slip is exposed. Last night, there were sections where soloist and ensemble were running along different streets.
But elsewhere there were some fine things to point out. William Schuman's “American Festival” Overture received a. perky, alert reading. The Sibelius Second went along smoothly and with a good deal of power. There was nothing in the least bashful about the sonorities evoked by the Japan Philharmonic to the work. In addition, some of the solo playing was of a thoroughly professional order. Mr. Watanabe is a Sibelius specialist, and his orchestra played the Second as a group that obviously has a great deal of familiarity with the work.
Mr. Watanabe also conducted a work by Toshiro Mayuzumi, the young Japanese avant‐garde composer who recently has been active in this city. It was named “Essay for Strings,” was composed last year and is an. exercise in unusual string sonorities—glissandos for the most part, interspersed with varieties of pizzicato sounds. It is not only an unorthodox work; it is also, in its way, a very imaginative one, creating a whirlpool of tone that goes round and round with a nearly hypnotic effect.
The soloist of the evening was the popular Japanese violinist Toshiya Eto. He is a skillful player with a rather small tone, and Mr. Watanabe helped him along by reducing the number of the orchestra's strings. Mr. Eto presented a delicate, small‐scaled but well‐proportioned Mendelssohn. After the heavy howitzer approach of the international violinistic set, this Mendelssohn came as an agreeable present from Japan.
End
Harold Schonberg