Firma Melodiya and the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory with support of the All-Russian Non-governmental Organization The Union of Russia’s Composers present the first release from the large-scale project Anthology of Contemporary Choral Music by Russian Composers performed by the Chamber Choir of the Moscow State Conservatory.
Based on the recorded evidence, if you want spirited and insightful performances of eastern European romantic orchestral repertoire, Gianandrea Noseda is the conductor of choice. In his previous discs of Liszt's tone poems and Dvorák's concertos for violin and for piano, the young Italian conductor had turned in effective and affecting performances of works that get little attention from most international conductors.
Toru Takemitsu (1931-1996) was a self-taught Japanese composer who combined elements of Eastern and Western music and philosophy to create a unique sound world. Some of his early influences were the sonorities of Debussy, and Messiaen's use of nature imagery and modal scales. There is a certain influence of Webern in Takemitsu's use of silence, and Cage in his compositional philosophy, but his overall style is uniquely his own. Takemitsu believed in music as a means of ordering or contextualizing everyday sound in order to make it meaningful or comprehensible.