Plato had this notion that musical innovation is full of danger, that when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of State always change with them. The idea fits well with our closing millennium and its attendant psychological crises, and helps explain the attraction of a soothing ‘new lyricism’ based on euphonious laurels that were crafted earlier on in our century – by Debussy, Ravel, Delius, Scriabin, Richard Strauss, Finzi and many others.
Takashi Yoshimatsu – billed as Chandos’s “Composer in Residence” – is a self-confessed ‘new lyricist’; he airbrushes a seductive array of sounds, cueing an oboe here, a harp or solo violin there, invariably from a comfortable cushion of string tone and (for at least two of the pieces in this programme) with an insistently simple piano part colouring the mix. Casual, uncritical listening may well yield a measure of delight, especially after a hard day’s work; but if you are on the look-out for something thoughtful, original or challenging, then this CD is definitely not for you.
We are told that Yoshimatsu “decries unmusical trends in modern music”, though I would like to know how he defines ‘musical’. He apparently had the idea of composing “a beautiful piano concerto in the same key, the same three-part form and the same double-wind arrangement” as Mozart’s K595. Well, if Yoshimatsu’s concerto is “beautiful”, I hesitate to think what that makes Mozart’s B flat … though the filigree woodwind writing in the “Flower” first movement, delicate wind chimes in the “Petals” Andante and vigorous, jig-like finale have their own modest charms. True, the orchestral pieces do occasionally stir (Dream Coloured Mobile II is the most attractive of them), but more often they languish in cosy aural contentment. I’d call it escapist mood music, designed primarily to conjure a sympathetic dream-world. Nothing more to say, really, save that the performances and recordings seem generally beyond criticism and that the mood set at the beginning of the programme extends more or less for the duration. A New Age-style experience, then, utterly palatable, pleasantly relaxing but ultimately ephemeral.'