Credits:

Prokofiev (1891-1953)

Description:

A great accomplishment! A collection of 20th century music masterpieces by Asahina and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra! Prokofiev: Symphony No. 2, Yutaka Ohkuri: Unsui Hoso, Ibert: Ports of Call 1966 Stereo studio recording of Takashi Asahina's 20th century music! It is a studio recording with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, and it is a stereo recording. His son, conductor Chitoku Asahina, remembers this performance and visited Stuttgart from Bremen, where he was studying, to attend the studio recording. At that time, the chief conductor of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra was Müller-Kreis, but Schuricht was still alive and made frequent guest appearances. The orchestra sounded brilliant and powerful in its heyday, and the technical perfection of the orchestra was unmistakable. As for the performance, "Port of Call" was a gorgeous musical picture scroll of light and color, land and sea, as if it were a twin of Debussy's "The Sea". The colorful expression is also superb. Unsui no San" is still one of the most popular of Oguri's works and was premiered by Asahina with the Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra in 1962. It is intriguing that a work with such strong Buddhist colors is performed by a prestigious German orchestra. The commentary includes an analization by Tomoo Shiraishi, a musicologist and researcher of Yutaka Ohkuri. And the finest performance is Prokofiev's Symphony No. 2. This is one of the best performances of this piece, which is not often recorded. The tempo is set with plenty of space and the sense of rhythm is wonderful, and the performance has an appealing power that allows the listener to lose themselves in the midst of tension.From the first movement of the sonata form, the piece takes a turn and depicts a feast of a thousand changes. Asahina performed this piece for the first time in Japan with the NHK Symphony Orchestra in October 1967. This is believed to be the first performance in Japan. This is a valuable record of the period when Asahina served as an "introducer of contemporary music" before he became a major composer of Beethoven, Brahms, and Bruckner. It is embellished with a rare photo of Asahina in his 50s by Akira Kinoshita. With liner notes in English and Japanese. Tobu Shoji Co.