MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

 

alternatively
CD: MDT AmazonUK AmazonUS
Sound Samples & Downloads

Karen TANAKA (b.1961)
Crystalline
Crystalline (1988) [6:53]
Water Dance (2008) [12:01]
Northern Lights (1996) [1:13]
Lavender Field (1994) [1:52]
Three Techno Etudes (2000) [8:31]
Children of Light (1998-9) [excerpts] [13:28]
Crystalline II (1995-6) [7:26]
Signe Bakke (piano)
rec. Sofienberg Church, Oslo, October 2008 and January 2010. DDD
2L 074 [51:24]

Experience Classicsonline



Mention of Japanese composer Karen Tanaka in these pages has been very brief, but always complimentary: her string quartet, At the Grave of Beethoven, reviewed more than a decade ago here, and two of her very short piano works featured on this new release, Northern Lights and Lavender Field, played by Thalia Myers on two anthologies, reviewed here and here. This appears to be the first CD devoted entirely to her works - the nearest thing to date was 'Invisible Curve', a disc of chamber music released on New World Records (80683) in 2008, which she shared with Chinese composer Chen Yi.

Crystalline I and II, which open and close this fascinating recital respectively, were written a few years apart, the latter an obvious follow-up to the first. According to the liner-notes, the title reflects the composer's intention to create a "rendering of a cool timeless world of glittering, sparkling crystals." The style and sonorities of Crystalline I, one of Tanaka's earlier works, give a good idea of what to expect from her piano music - detail, delicacy, consonance, timbral sculpturing, sensuality.

The 'prismatic' idea of the Crystallines recurs in the most recent of Tanaka's piano pieces, Water Dance - actually a set of three dances - which was commissioned by Norwegian pianist Signe Bakke herself, who has had a working relationship with Tanaka for some time. The 'water' element is not the musically archetypal undulation of waves or ebb and flow of tides, but more the play of light on the shimmering surface of a clear - crystalline, one may say - mountain stream.

One great service Tanaka renders art music in works like Water Dance or the Techno Etudes, is to expose the mountebankery of mainstream minimalism. Her music here is a minimalism of sorts, but so much more intelligent, more inventive, more profound than the piano music of, say, Philip Glass or Ludovico Einaudi, or a thousand anonymous Hollywood film scores. Tanaka studied at IRCAM with Tristan Murail, famed for his so-called 'spectral' music, which clearly had a strong influence on her own stated interest in the "transformation of timbre in space, analogous to a gradual change of light refraction in crystals and prisms".

A different side of Tanaka's pianism can be heard in the Children of Light, a set of simple but exquisite melodic miniatures written for children, both to enjoy and play - although one of them at least, African Elephant, sounds far from easy! Some of the pieces are so instantly, deliciously memorable that listeners will be amazed that this is the first time of hearing. As an educational bonus to children, there is an overall ecological theme - each piece describes the special natural beauty of or a threatened species of animal from different parts of the world. The eight varied items selected here are from a total of twenty; what a pity, on this evidence, that the rest were not recorded - there would surely have been enough space on this disc, which, though otherwise excellent in every regard, is rather brazenly on the short side.

There are two pieces in Bakke's recital with the title Northern Lights, one from the Children of Light collection, the second a stand-alone work commissioned by the Royal School of Music with Lavender Field for teaching purposes. The CD booklet gives Tanaka's instructions to learners for performing these rhythmic, succinct pieces - both of which, incidentally, were recorded by Thalia Myers on the CDs linked to above. For Lavender Field, for example, the player is told to "imagine weaving colour and scent with sounds. The harmonic series on E flat appears and disappears into space at the end."

In all the above works the pianist must show great finesse and sensitivity, a demand which Bakke meets with total reliability. In the curiously named Techno Etudes, on the other hand, the accent is firmly on virtuosity, particularly rhythmic speed - and again Bakke is equal to it. The music was commissioned by Japanese pianist Tomoko Mukayama, who originally asked for a work to synchronise with some pre-taped 'techno' music. Though the techno idea was thankfully dropped, the title stuck, as did the emphasis on an almost robotic drive and great velocity. This is hypnotic, primal music, and the CD notes argue the case, not altogether convincingly, that it expresses at a deep level similar ideas to the far more delicate, complex sounds of the 'crystalline' works. Quite inventively, the notes describe the particularly virtuosic first movement as sounding like "a frenetic boogie-woogie machine that sometimes seems to get stuck".

The sound quality on this hybrid SACD is immaculate, even listening in normal stereo. This is how solo piano music should be recorded. The booklet, the back cover of which is glued onto the cardboard case, has well-written, detailed notes in English and Norwegian. Oddly, Tanaka does not get a mention on the front cover or the CD itself.

Playing time aside, a superb release.

Byzantion

Collected reviews and contact at reviews.gramma.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.