Review: Symphony dazzles with Japanese composer’s saxophone paean to colorful double stars

Tokyo-born composer Takashi Yoshimatsu can’t claim the international reputation of compatriots Joe Hisaishi (of Studio Ghibli fame) or Toshio Hosokawa, but that may be changing soon.

Among his 100-plus compositions you’ll find six symphonies, concerti for everything from piano and cello to alto saxophone, bassoon, and Japanese shakuhachi and koto, a film score for an anime TV classic, and an orchestration of Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s prog-rock “Tarkus” (1971). Largely self-taught, Yoshimatsu’s music dabbled with serialism until he embraced what he calls “new lyricism” in the mid-1980s.

Since then, outside of Japan, where he’s programmed frequently, his music has found audiences from Prague (Czech Philharmonic) and Vienna (Musikverein) to Germany and Lithuania. Closer to home, Yoshimatsu’s Symphony No. 4 was performed last year by Sorrento Valley’s Villa Musica Symphony Orchestra.

This past weekend, 32-year-old saxophonist Steven Banks and the San Diego Symphony elevated Yoshimatsu’s profile further with a dazzling performance of his 2005 concerto for soprano saxophone “Albireo Mode.” While Banks most often performs the alto and baritone saxophones, he’s previously shown his chops with the soprano sax (think John Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things”) in John Adams’ Saxophone Concerto and Saad Haddad’s “A Sonata for When Time Stands Still.”

Named after differently-tinged double stars in the Cygnus constellation, Yoshimatsu’s 22-minute Albireo was a revelation. Against a shimmering wash of harp, piano, and subtle percussion, the meditative first movement, “Topaz,” mostly lets the soloist show his stuff. Banks complied with a gorgeous, mesmerizing range of colors and textures.

Though “Albireo Mode” has been recorded only once (by Nobuya Sugawa and the BBC Philharmonic), Banks’ sheer tonal power and expressive charisma earns him pride of place. In his second-movement, “Sapphire,” Yoshimatsu sought to offset the “cool and beautiful” hues of the first movement with something “hot and deep.”

“Sapphire” offers lovely lyrical moments, but its heart seems to be jazz (bluesy glissandos, Brubeckian rhythms, etc.) and nature (animal-like braying, screeching, and trumpeting, etc.). Yoshimatsu packages it all so virtuosically in a foundation of oceanic strings, tasteful percussion, and drone-like woodwinds that his wild sonic ride goes down smoothly.

Responding to a standing ovation, Banks encored with a compelling take on the Saraband from Bach’s flute partita in A Minor. Given the flute’s elegant clarity, Banks’ reedy, penetrating, vocally expressive soprano put a whole new spin on Bach’s gem.

With the imprimatur of a Juilliard scholarship and a Dudamel Fellowship, 37-year-old German conductor Ruth Reinhardt won her first leadership post last June as the Rhode Island Philharmonic’s next music director. No podium acrobat, she’s nevertheless a proactive, fully immersed leader, using economical left- and baton-hand motions and continual eye communication to steer her ship.

Reinhardt seemed to bask in the color and volume the Symphony’s musicians put at her disposal. The overture and three dances from Smetana’s “Bartered Bride” are a riot of Bohemian rhythms, dynamic contrasts, racing tempos, and complex orchestration, but Reinhardt kept the orchestra tightly turning on every dime.

The program’s closing Czech bookend was a gritty, iridescent Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8. More than just 23 chronological years separate it from Smetana’s “Bartered Bride.” While the latter explicitly celebrated its Czech roots, Dvorak, also a proud Czech, had a more international (read: Germanic) orientation.

Keeping tempos in the middle of customary ranges and respecting Dvorak’s “long line,” Reinhardt shone a luxuriating light on Dvorak’s bravura orchestration. She policed unanimity, but let individual sections and instruments strut: the horns (first and second movements), the trumpets and trombones (fourth movement), Valentin Martchev’s bassoon (second movement), Rose Lombardo’s flute (fourth movement), and the luxuriant sheen of the strings throughout. But this was very much a collective coup.

Paul S. Bodine has been writing about music for over 30 years for publications such as Classical Voice North America, Times of San Diego, Orange County Register, and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Among the artists he’s interviewed are Joshua Bell, Herbert Blomstedt, Sarah Chang, Ivan Fischer, Bruno Canino, Christopher O’Reilly, Lindsay String Quartet, and Paul Chihara.