new notes reviews, 28.09.2006

”The opening of koan exposes some beautifully delicate passages centred around the lower harmonic series; however, as the listener becomes accustomed to this fragile soundworld, the music rapidly moves off into more dense, wandering textures. The shakuhachi (played convincingly by Teruhisa Fukuda throughout) performs a focal declamatory role, with a combined flavour of Western modernism and the Japanese aesthetic tradition which is so obviously an enormous influence on the composer’s outlook. The varied layering of textures is well-balanced, although the intimate delicacy of the opening is never reiterated or implied, leaving one somewhat overloaded by the complexity of the polyphonic textures later on in the piece.

In still, the traditional concept of ma centred around the empty areas in artistic composition is exploited successfully, where miniscule sounds reverberate in the silences which surround them. The constant iteration of single guitar tones provide a platform around which other heavier sounds to form a web, while being continually placed within the framework of silences. The certain melancholy created from the dichotomy of the two states is sustained persuasively throughout the piece.

Satori, the spiritual awakening during Zen meditation, forms the final piece on the CD and is for solo harpsichord performed by the composer. Again there is a vacuous spaciousness in the music, which sometimes threatens to engulf the thin sound of the harpsichord’s higher tones, but also allows the listener to indulge in the rich sonorities which emanate from the instrument. The dyads towards the end of the piece evoke meditative states of being, and although perhaps contrary to the essence of Satori, the piece satisfyingly raises more questions than it answers.

Richard Glover
http://www.spnm.org.uk