This live recording, made in 2006 at the Concert Hall Art Tower Mito in Japan, was not released until 2021. The booklet refers only to unspecified practical reasons for the delay, and perhaps it was a release schedule damaged by the coronavirus that finally shook it loose. Whatever the case, it's good to have it. The main attraction, Toshio Hosokawa's Lotus Under the Moonlight for piano and orchestra, has been played in various places, but this performance by pianist Momo Kodama and Seiji Ozawa's Mito Chamber Orchestra was ...
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This live recording, made in 2006 at the Concert Hall Art Tower Mito in Japan, was not released until 2021. The booklet refers only to unspecified practical reasons for the delay, and perhaps it was a release schedule damaged by the coronavirus that finally shook it loose. Whatever the case, it's good to have it. The main attraction, Toshio Hosokawa's Lotus Under the Moonlight for piano and orchestra, has been played in various places, but this performance by pianist Momo Kodama and Seiji Ozawa's Mito Chamber Orchestra was the world recorded premiere. It's a marvelous work that delivers on Kodama's promise in the booklet of "a bridge between the worlds of East and West," for despite its beautifully realized and very Asian central image, it has deep links to the West. Hosokawa was commissioned to write a work with the same instrumental forces as Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K 488, and he inserts hints of that work into a central dreamlike sequence. That Mozart concerto, with Kodama backed...
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