BCMG/Yamada review – flutter tonguing, fragrant dissonances and frogs

The Guardian

15-04-2025

In the foyer, a family workshop was in full swing. A huddle of under-12s listened intently to Japan-born, Britain-based composer Dai Fujikura. Several delighted non-children sidled up to tuned percussion instruments laid out on a table. There were instructions and paper for making an origami frog.
These were cheery attempts to contextualise BCMG's programme: an all-Japanese first half by Misato Mochizuki and Fujikura – including the world premiere of the latter's new Shō Concerto – followed by Korean composer Unsuk Chin's Xi for Ensemble and Tape. But hold fire on the east-meets-west cliches. Fujikura moved to the UK aged 15 and first encountered the shō at Darmstadt in his 20s. As he explained in a pre-concert talk, Japanese instruments are all 'new' to him.
The shō sounds like a tiny organ with 17 bamboo 'pipes'. In Fujikura's concerto, the bright, laser-intense timbre of soloist Yuki Deai was the trigger for orchestral pitch- and tone-matching, sounds passed from shō to violins and upper woodwind. Just occasionally, the orchestra responded with a rich, bass-weighted roar or a full-voiced chord. The shō mostly layered notes in delicate clusters (the dissonances never more than fragrant) while passages of flutter tonguing and a driving rhythmic tattoo provided contrast. Under conductor Kazuki Yamada, the effect was beautiful, if rather amorphous.
Even Fujikura seemed surprised that BCMG had programmed An Anthem (2020), his arrangement of the Japanese national anthem for a long-ago cancelled event, though the musicians took care with its airy orchestration. The UK premiere of Mochizuki's Etheric Blueprint (2006) was more persuasive. From a sample of water dripping, it developed into a beguiling compendium of analogue and electronic sounds, many quietly intricate (think ASMR avant la lettre).
Chin's Xi was radical when new in 1998, combining tape and live musicians to explore the territory between 'noise' and pitch. Today, the work's use of spatial audio (clicks and clanks, breaths and patters sliding between six speakers) remains immersive. But in this performance, driven by conductor Nicolò Foron in a distracting slow-motion robotic dance, its relentless bittiness felt like the 'new music' of another age: distant beyond geography.