Subscription Concert C Series

Subscription Concert No.1031 C Series

Date: Fri. 19. December 2025 14:00 (13:00)

Venue: Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre Venue Info Seat

[50th Anniversary of Shostakovich’s death]

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Artists

Kazuhiro KOIZUMI, Conductor
Fumiaki MIURA, Violin

Profile

Kazuhiro KOIZUMI (Honorary Conductor for Life)

Kazuhiro Koizumi studied at Tokyo University of the Arts and at Universität der Künste Berlin. After winning the 1st prize at Karajan International Conducting Competition in 1973, he has appeared with Berliner Philharmoniker, Wiener Philharmoniker, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony, and Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, among others. Currently, he serves as Honorary Conductor for Life of TMSO, Honorary Music Director for Life of Kyushu Symphony, Honorary Music Director of Nagoya Philharmonic, and Special Guest Conductor of Kanagawa Philharmonic.

Fumiaki MIURA (Violin)

Born in Tokyo, Fumiaki Miura starts his musical education with Tsugio Tokunaga at his hometown Conservatory before moving to Vienna to carry on his studies with Pavel Vernikov and Julian Rachlin. Since aged 16, Fumiaki is mentored and guided by Pinchas Zukerman. In 2009 he was awarded First Prize at the prestigious Joseph Joachim Hannover International Violin Competition, being the youngest winner ever.
Miura has performed with orchestras including Los Angeles Philharmonic, Mariinsky Theater, among many others. In 2022 Miura served as Artist-in-Residence of The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of London. Fumiaki Miura plays under the baton of conductors such as Krzysztof Penderecki, Gustavo Dudamel, Pinchas Zukerman, Valery Gergiev, and Petr Popelka.Miura has collaborated also with artists including Yuri Bashmet, Mischa Maisky, Maria João Pires,Julian Rachlin, and Pinchas Zukerman.
Regular invitations to international music festivals include Miyazaki, Ravinia, Schleswig-Holstein, Menton, Gyeonggi Chamber Music Festival, and Menuhin Gstaad. Since 2018, he serves as artistic leader of ARK Classics, annual music festival at Suntory Hall in Tokyo. Fumiaki Miura will become the music director of the Miyazaki International Music Festival from 2025.
Miura performs on the Guarneri del Gesu 1732 violin “Kaston” kindly loaned by Crystco Inc. and its CEO, Mr. Hikaru Shimura.
photo ©Yuji Hori

Program

Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto in D major, op.35

Program Notes
Shostakovich: Symphony No.10 in E minor, op.93

Program Notes

｜Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto in D major, op.35

Ⅰ Allegro moderato - Moderato assai
Ⅱ Canzonetta: Andante
Ⅲ Finale: Allegro vivacissimo

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Born in Votkinsk, May 7, 1840; died in St. Petersburg, November 6, 1893

　“The Russian composer Tchaikovsky is surely not an ordinary talent, but rather an inflated one, with a genius-obsession without discrimination or taste. Such is also his latest, long and pretentious Violin Concerto. For a while it moves soberly, musically, and not without spirit. But soon vulgarity gains the upper hand …Friedrich Vischer once observed, speaking of obscene pictures, that they stink to the eye. Tchaikovskyʼs Violin Concerto gives us for the first time the hideous notion that there can be music that stinks to the ear.”
　Incredible as it may seem today, these were the words that greeted the world premiere of Tchaikovskyʼs Violin Concerto in Vienna in December of 1881. The quotation is by the notorious critic Eduard Hanslick, but eight of the ten reviews that appeared in Vienna voiced much the same sentiment.
　The circumstances leading to the concertoʼs first performance were hardly auspicious. Tchaikovsky composed the work during March and April of 1878 while staying at Clarens, on Lake Geneva, Switzerland. There he was visiting his composition student, Yosif Yosifovich Kotek, who was at the time undertaking a cure for tuberculosis, and who was the one responsible for introducing Tchaikovsky to the wealthy patroness Nadejda von Meck. But Kotek expressed dissatisfaction with the second movement, and Tchaikovsky replaced it with an entirely different one.
　Madame von Meck was not entirely pleased by the concerto either. But the biggest blow was probably the rejection from the celebrated virtuoso and teacher Leopold Auer, to whom the work was originally dedicated. Auer pronounced it unplayable. Not until nearly four years after its completion did Adolf Brodsky take up its cause, giving the first performance not in Russia but in Vienna. He was daunted neither by its technical difficulties nor by the dismal critical reception.
Tchaikovsky rewrote the dedication to Brodsky, who went on to perform the concerto in London, and then in Moscow, eventually winning public support for it. Even Auer, in his old age, finally saw its merits; the concerto would become one of the mainstays in the repertories of his prodigies, including Mischa Elman, Jascha Heifetz and Efrem Zimbalist. Todayʼs students readily master yesterdayʼs most fiendish difficulties, and Tchaikovskyʼs Violin Concerto is now one of the two or three most popular works in the genre.
　Although full of bravura passage work, the concerto also contains a wealth of pure romantic lyricism for which Tchaikovsky is so noted. The first movement boasts both a lyrical first and second theme, and even the cadenza emphasizes the expressive over the virtuosic. The second movement, subtitled “Canzonetta,” has a certain melancholic wistfulness to it − soulful though not mournful. The muted solo violin presents the first folklike theme. This brief movement is followed without pause by the exhilarating Finale, whose themes suggest Russian dance tunes and rhythms, especially the trepak.

Robert Markow's musical career began as a horn player in the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. He now writes program notes for orchestras and concert organizations in the USA, Canada, and several countries in Asia. As a journalist he covers the music scenes across North America, Europe, and Asian countries, especially Japan. At Montreal's McGill University he lectured on music for over 25 years.
　

｜Shostakovich: Symphony No.10 in E minor, op.93

Ⅰ Moderato
Ⅱ Allegro
Ⅲ Allegretto
Ⅳ Andante - Allegro

Dmitri Shostakovich: Born in St. Petersburg, September 25, 1906; died in Moscow, August 9, 1975

　Although Dmitri Shostakovich wrote music in all genres, it was as a composer of symphonies and string quartets that he was best known in the West during his lifetime. From the vantage point of nearly half a century after his death, this assessment remains unchallenged. In this regard, he can be compared to Haydn, but not even Haydnʼs symphonic creativity lasted as long as Shostakovichʼs. From his First Symphony, written as a diploma exercise at the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1924-25, to his Fifteenth of nearly half a century later, Shostakovich left an indelible mark on the twentieth century as one of its greatest symphonists, comparable to Beethoven in the nineteenth, some would contend.
　The world premiere in Leningrad (today St. Petersburg again) of the Tenth Symphony on December 17, 1953, conducted by Yevgeny Mravinsky, and the subsequent performance in Moscow twelve days later, won exuberant public acceptance.
The official world reserved judgment until it had studied the work at an extensive three-day seminar the following spring. Boris Schwarz described the proceedings in his invaluable book Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 1917-1970 as follows: The debate “seemed to transcend the significance of the work and centered on a vital principle: the right of an artist to express himself, individually rather than collectively, subjectively rather than objectively, without bureaucratic interference and tutelage.” The committee decided in Shostakovichʼs favor (the symphony was billed as an “optimistic tragedy”!), and he was later named “Peopleʼs Artist of the U.S.S.R.,” the highest artistic honor awarded by the Soviet Union. The Tenth Symphony went on to worldwide fame and is now, along with the First and Fifth, the most frequently heard of the composerʼs symphonies.
　Shostakovichʼs command of musical material is seen at its finest in the opening pages. Working with little more than a six-note motif, he presents a long (sixty bars), quiet passage for strings alone. Melodic elements of this passage will be found in all four movements of the symphony. The scope and darkly brooding quality of this music have led some to describe it as Faustian.
“Music of wandering, drifting,” is musicologist Michael Steinbergʼs description. Finally the clarinet enters with the second subject, an infinitely sad yet lyrical idea that slowly unwinds, growing by small increments to the first of the movementʼs big climaxes. Eventually a third subject is introduced – a languid, waltz-like theme first heard in the somber low range of the flute. Each of these ideas is extensively developed alone, then in various combinations against a background of inexorable growth, leading to ever-more intense climaxes. The movement closes quietly, as it began.
　The breathless silence that ends the first movement could not stand in greater contrast to what follows. For sheer demonic fury and searing, whitehot intensity, there are few moments in all music to match this symphonyʼs second movement, the musical equivalent of a tornado ride through hell.
Though only four minutes in length, it inevitably leaves the listener emotionally drained by the time the last wall of sound has roared to an abrupt stop.
　If the first movement is the symphonyʼs most awesome in design, and the second its most viscerally exciting, the third might be considered the philosophical centerpiece. A gentle, folklike tune for strings alone sets things in motion, beginning with the same series of three pitches that opened each of the previous movements. A sinister, dance-like tune intrudes, written for the entire woodwind choir accompanied only by timpani and triangle. At length a new element enters the picture: a five-note call announced by the solo horn. This call is heard a total of a dozen times, ranging from assertive to manic (all four horns in unison) to feeble (the last few statements are but mere echoes). Also pervading this movement is the composerʼs musical signature, a fournote motif derived from his name in German orthography: DSCH (Dmitri SCHostakowitsch), in which “S” corresponds to “Es” (E-flat in English) and “H” to B natural; hence, D, E-flat, C, B, or its equivalent in various transpositions.
　The finale opens with one of the longest slow introductions in the entire symphonic repertory, amounting almost to a movement in itself. The mood of the Andante is tense, ominous, foreboding. Extended solos for woodwinds intensify the mood of haunting loneliness. Suddenly all anxiety is thrusted aside with the intrusion of a sprightly, affirmative theme in the violins (Allegro). Churning strings, brass fanfares, and a sinister military march derived from material in the second movement all contribute to the summation and resolution of inner conflicts spanning fifty minutes of music. The symphony ends in E major, with the DSCH motif exultantly proclaimed by horns, trombones and timpani in turn.

Robert Markow's musical career began as a horn player in the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. He now writes program notes for orchestras and concert organizations in the USA, Canada, and several countries in Asia. As a journalist he covers the music scenes across North America, Europe, and Asian countries, especially Japan. At Montreal's McGill University he lectured on music for over 25 years.
　

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