Ideal musical sensitivity

Nick Barnard, Music Web International

“What is there not to enjoy about this disc! Piano Duettists Simon Callaghan and Hiroaki Takenouchi have put together a programme bubbling with witty and attractive music, which they play with insouciant technical brilliance and ideal musical sensitivity.”

Callaghan and Takenouchi are not just considerable solo pianists individually, they have built an impressive discography together as duettists and this is shown here with the easy precision of their ensemble playing and a complete alignment in their musical styles. In the past, I have enjoyed their performances of larger-scale original scores as well as orchestral transcriptions – two discs of Delius’ orchestral works on Somm spring warmly to mind. But here, in the main, they are playing skilfully crafted miniatures to which they apply exactly the same levels of performing brilliance and insight.

…

…Callaghan and Takenouchi choose an ideally infectious and bright tempo [for Dring’s Danza Gaya] (Dring wrote on the score; “I haven’t put a metronome marking – always enough to bring me out in a rash”) which again is not as easy to ‘hit’ as might be assumed. There is a wind quintet version of the piece previously released on ASV’s “White Line” label by the Raphaele Wind Sextet that is markedly slower and actually rather bland compared to Callaghan and Takenouchi’s sparkle and fizz. Although written as individual pieces, the first four tracks make for an attractively contrasted ‘suite’ of dances, which occasionally had me in mind of the urbane wit and clarity of Richard Rodney Bennett’s piano writing. All of which underlines the sophistication not just of the music, but also the playing and Lyrita’s discreetly fine engineering. The two pianos are clearly placed to the left and right of the soundstage, but in a way that allows musical integration as well as instrumental definition.

…

…Great credit to the performers… for playing [Dring’s Three for Two and Four Duets] unfussily straight, but with a clarity and articulation that serves the music perfectly…

“…Callaghan and Takenouchi have the perfect measure of [Dorothy Howell] music with ideal clarity of touch and articulation of rhythms that allow a sense of ease and expressive freedom…”

The performance [of Howell’s Spindrift] here – again aided by the unfussy excellence of the Lyrita production – sounds ideal and underlines the absurdity of such music not being better known.

…

So as will be clear this is a very attractive recital from which all involved parties; composers, performers and production team all emerge with their individual statures further enhanced… As I wrote at the beginning of this review; what’s not to enjoy!

The recording:
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Interlude, Maureen Buja

Excellent performances
1 Feb 19

MusicWeb International, Jonathan Woolf

A hugely enjoyable listen, played with infectious authority
3 Feb 18

The Arts Desk, Graham Rickson

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Hiroaki Takenouchi does the piece proud
1 Jan 18

British Music Society, Michael Round

Unwavering conviction and … constantly expressive musicality
1 Jan 18

Myron Silberstein, Fanfare

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Exhilarating playing here from pianist Hiroaki Takenouchi
4 Dec 17

The Guardian, Stephen Pritchard

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Takenouchi handles this with bravura ease and a warm, refined sound
20 Sep 17

Crossed Eyed Pianist, Fran Wilson

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Romantically affluent, poundingly sonorous and rich in pathos
7 Aug 17

MusicWeb International, Rob Barnett

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Broad expressive capacity…..superb technical abilities
31 Jul 17

Record Geijutsu, Shinnosuke Nagai

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Rich in tone and possessing an enviably secure technique – 5 Stars
27 Jul 17

Classical Ear, Andrew Achenbach

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Brilliantly played by Takenouchi
9 Jul 17

End Notes – The Quarterly Review, Stuart Millson

Confidence, conviction and tremendous panache
1 Jun 17

Em Marshall-Luck, Albion Magazine

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His playing is rich, dazzling and intelligently shaped
29 May 17

Sunday Times, Stephen Pettitt
Sterndale Bennett and Schumann – Hiroaki Takenouchi

Movingly Played
3 Aug 15

MusicWeb International, John France

“My major discovery on this CD was the only piece by a British composer – Ernest Walker’s heartbreakingly, beautiful Study (not a Prelude as given in the notes) for the left hand alone, op. 47 (1931). Better known for his seminal A History of Music in England, Walker was a composer, organist and pianist. The present work was one of three written for the pianist Paul Wittgenstein who had lost his right arm during the First World War. The Study is deeply felt, largely exploiting the lower registers of the piano and demanding a good legato technique. It is movingly played here by Hiroaki Takenouchi.”

 

He is unfailingly convincing, his playing thoughtful, lyrical and spontaneous
4 Jan 15

The Sunday Times, Stephen Pettitt

A deeply felt reading
1 Feb 14

MusicWeb International, Ian Lace
Recording of the Month

A convincing advocate
1 Oct 12

American Record Guide, Don O’Connor

“The performances are excellent. Takenouchi’s skill and, as important, his belief in the music makes him a convincing advocate. Yates and the RNSO capably abet a worthy enterprise.”

Finely played
1 Aug 12

Gramophone, David Fanning

“Hiroaki Takenouchi […] is impeccable in his pianism and unfailing in his idiomatic grasp.”

“Once again finely played by Takenouchi, this too is a must-have for anyone interested in the post-history of the Romantic piano concerto. With decent orchestral support and recording, and excellent documentation, it all adds up to a more than welcome issue.”

Yates and Takenouchi revive Russian and British concertos

The modem rediscovery of Georgy Catoirc’s modestly proportioned oeuvre was kick-started by Marc-Andre Hamelin’s 1999 Hyperion recital (1/00- soon to reappear on Helios). Since then the chamber music has been quite well served, leaving just the songs and orchestral works in search of modern champions.

The Piano Concerto was composed in 1906-09, according to most catalogues, though its first performer, Alexander Goldenweiser, gave 1911 as the date of completion. Dutton do not claim theirs as a first-ever recording; though if Aima Zassimova’s lavish documentary study (Berlin, Verlag Emst Kuhn: 2011) is to be trusted, it would seem to be so. Like all Catoire’s instrumental works, the Concerto bears the mark of his close encounters with Tchaikovsky, Taneyev and Scriabin. Accomplished pianist and thoroughly trained composer that he was, the music always falls gratefully on the ear, though in terms of surprise, delight or individuality it lags far behind the likes of, say, Cesar Franck, whose Symphonic Variations loom large behind the 19-minute first movement. Any limitations in the music’s effect are surely no fault of Hiroaki Takenouchi, however, who is impeccable in his pianism and unfailing in his idiomatic grasp.

The adventurous spirit of this young Japanese-bom, London-based pianist also gives us the Second Concerto (1932-33) of Percy Sherwood (1866-1939), a German-born pianist-teacher-composer who settled in Hampstead at the onset of the First World War and whose manuscripts now reside in the Bodleian Library. This is music still solidly rooted in the 19th-century Germanic tradition, with some imposing Rachmaninovisms grafted on. Never less than accomplished, it is never much more than that either. Once again finely played by Takenouchi, this too is a must-have for anyone interested in the post-history of the Romantic piano concerto. With decent orchestral support and recording, and excellent documentation, it all adds up to a more than welcome issue.

Gracefully expressive
20 Jan 12

BBC Music Magazine, Michael Church

“For Takemitsu, walking through a garden was a quasi-musical experience, and that’s the feeling one gets from Les yeux clos II, the late work by him in this collection.  Debussy’s sound-world is his source, but he pursues the argument into mystical realms; Hiroaki Takenouchi delivers it with gracefully expressive economy, as he does the eight other piece he has chosen to reflect the pianistic tradition among Japanese composers schooled in the musical ways of the avant-garde West.

The other pieces which stand out here are Joji Yuasa’s exquisite Cosmos Haptic (‘relating to the sense of touch’), in which single notes and terse phrases are dropped like pebbles into a silent pool, and Sachiyo Tsurumi’s exuberant Toy 2 for piano and electronics, in which the piano’s timbre is decorated by gentle gurgles and burps.”

Performance  ★★★★
Recording  ★★★★

Takenouchi will go far
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MusicWeb International, Mark Sealey

“This is a sumptuous, relaxed, languorous CD of nine spare – yet also explosive – Japanese contemporary pieces for piano.  It is as much an act of love as it is of exposition of new music.  The composers have been chosen by Hiroaki Takenouchi to represent work from that country of the last half century or so.  They reveal an intensity with – and, really, a sort of authority over – melody, texture, rhythm and what the instrument can do.  This intensity, this sense of command, can amaze, if we enter this sound-world as receptive listeners”

“a recital of real depth and interpretative strength […] here is beautiful, accomplished and truly delightful music.”

“Miyoshi’s and Nodaïra’s pieces are in contrast with what comes immediately before and with Hosokawa’s “Haiku”, which follows it, in that they have more pace, more evident animation.  The “Haiku” homage to Boulez shares some of the latter’s sound-world: clusters, vertical groupings, a love of sound for sound’s sake, sporadic interjections which serve to imply the melodic lines, rather than define them in linear fashion.  Here Takenouchi is at his poetic best.  Pauses, attacks, holding of notes – such techniques seem aimed at stretching the limits of pianism, without self-consciousness.  In fact they plunge us right into the essence of best practice and great creativity for the instrument.”

“This is emphatically and unashamedly modern, at times dissonant and aggressively uncompromising playing of honest, crystalline music.  Takenouchi (just 30 years old) is based in London, where he studied with the late Yonty Solomon.  He will go far.  His sureness of touch and dramatically clear and clean insight are ideally suited to this music and to the world it inhabits.  For something new, different, yet essentially full of integrity, beauty and creativity, this CD is well worth a look.”

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27/03/2025