Mendelssohn Piano Concerto No. 1 and Sommernachtstraum

Mendelssohn Piano Concerto No. 1 and Sommernachtstraum or Music to A Midsummer Night's Dream. Seiji Ozawa conducts a 20th-year anniversary concert of his Japanese Mito Chamber Orchestra in 2009 at the Mito Art Tower. Yu Kosuge is the piano soloist. For the Sommernachtstraum the orchestra is joined by soprano Akiko Nakajima, mezzo Katherine Rohrer,  ladies of the Tokyo Opera Singers (Chorus master: Masanori Mikawa), and narrator Yukiyoshi Ozawa (Seiji's son, an actor). The information in the collector's booklet is 99+% in Japanese, but there are nice subtitles in English on the disc. This title was recorded with 96kHz/24 bit sound sampling. The disc has 5.0 PCM sound output. For the Piano Concerto No. 1  Grade: A    For the A Midsummer Night's Dream  Grade A-

Two of the most delicious confections from the Mendelssohn Konditorei!

Kosuge in the concerto had as much fun playing the piano as I had watching her. The Mito Chamber orchestra has 36 players for this number. You can the whole occupied stage from a camera location about 15 rows back. There is one angle (see 7:19) from which you can see everyone on stage at least in part.  (Be sure you are in Title 1 for the time stamps mentioned here.) Now we have been discussing in these mini-reviews our standards for grading symphony orchestra recordings for HDVD. The basic idea for picture content is to show the whole orchestra and only move in closer when there is a good reason. It's relatively easy to follow this idea when the orchestra is small. You could use the view seen at 7:19 for the whole shoot and call it the "best seat in the house" angle.

But that would be too boring when the TV cameraman has so many tricks in his bag. For this recording the TV director used several different mid-range shots so you get to see all the musicians quite well over time. Of course, there are numerous close up shots of Kosuge playing and the conductor. There are also the expected shots of soloists and small sections. At 9:03 the violas, cellos, bass violins, and a single horn play a mellow, languid theme to the pianist. The cameraman nails all of this in a smart, perfectly framed shot that shows all the active players as well as the resting second horn at the edge. In this shot you see exactly what you are hearing.

The lights were very bright at this performance and the cameras were perhaps overwhelmed. There's glare on the sheet music, the colors seem slightly diluted, and resolution is a bit soft.

The SQ is as good as in the Schumann Piano Concerto with Murray Perahia that we praised so highly. (The SQ is not as good, however,  as that of the piano playing in the AIX Chamber Music Palisades. But the AIX recording was made under scientifically controlled conditions that may not be realistically attainable in the field, so we continue to be happy with the SQ for the Mendelssohn concerto.)

I'm not sure that any recording of this short concerto is a "must have" item that would warrant the "A+" grade. Because of this reservation and the mild deficiency in PQ, I think an "A" is the best I  can do for this title. 

The A Midsummer Night's Dream music is complete with the Overture (written when Mendelssohn was 17) and the Incidental Music (written when Mendelssohn was 35). I was familiar with this music from the A Midsummer Night's Dream Ballet recorded by the Pacific Northwest Ballet and issued in HDVD by Opus Arte. I guessed that the soloists and singers on that disc were rendering poetry from Shakespeare, but I could not understand a word. However, on this Mito Chamber Orchestra disc, subtitles for the poetry are provided in Japanese and English!  So it chokes me up that I now learn which of Shakespeare's poems are set to music here from the beautiful ladies of the Tokyo Opera! They worked so hard to master the diction necessary to sing these difficult, concentrated lines from our Bard so well that they are mostly understandable even without the subtitles!

Also, the music pauses from time to time for narration by Yukiyoshi Ozawa (subtitles in English), which gives the Japanese audience some inkling about what goes on in this complicated story of fairies, lovers, and weddings. There is a lot more to this music than you might think. The Yukiyoshi Ozawa narration unlocks the piece for anyone who know the Shakespeare play.   And even my daughter, who prefers rock music to classical, burst into the home theater, mouth agape, at the sound of the famous wedding march. That's one part of classical music that she gets.

One benefit from seeing classical concerts in HDVD is that you get to know the individual musicians. In this recording I recognized maybe 8 players from the Saito Kinen Orchestra featured on the NHK HDVD of the Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique and Mahler Symphony No. 1. The Mito group has a lady tympani player, something I never saw before.

The quality of the music making is high and especially impressive considering short history of Western music in Japan. The SQ and PQ ace  excellent. This is one of the few HDVDs that goes into technical specifications in detail in the keep case booklet (none of which I can read, of course).

Unfortunately, the picture content of A Midsummer Night's Dream falls short of the high standards seen in some of the other recent NHK titles. The orchestra is now expanded to 42 players and there are 27 singers in the rear. This is more like a regular orchestra than a chamber group. True, there are a number of good shots of the whole band (see 26:02 and 26:38). There are some good section shots as well. For example, see 32:19 for a wonderful shot all the woodwind (8 players in 4 sections) playing mysterious chords. But mixed in with this are too many shots from the bad old DVD  days: lots of conductor views over the backs of the musicians, unnecessary panning through sections, too much irritating zooming in and out, the back of the concertmaster's head, etc. (Actually, concertmistress.) The TV director seemed to be angry at the violins; I don't recall a single shot in this piece of all the violins. Because of  this (mild) case of DVDitis, I grade The Midsummer Night's Dream down to A- (it could have qualified for an A+).

Although these titles don't get an A+, the performances  are luminous and precious. You see and hear how much the Japanese have accomplished in their efforts to develop a home-grown capability in western music. You also see and hear how happy and proud the performers are to show what they can do. So if you are interested in this music, I think you will be very pleased with this disc.

There is a bonus on this disc also of the 8-minute Bach Air from Orchestral Suite in D major. If you work at it you can find this separately (Title 3). Also, there is a mysterious Title 4 that has the Bach piece first, followed by the recording of the two main numbers reviewed above, but  with a different time stamp.

Finally, it would be great if someone could translate for us into English the technical specs that NHK presents in the keep case booklet. If you could do that, we would cheerfully publish it.

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