Kuniko, Cantus

The Japanese percussionist Kuniko Kato has a way about her. The album Cantus (Linn CKD 432) shows that clearly. It's her alone, on marimba and other percussion, sometimes multitracked to get the full result.

She performs Hywel Davies' "Purl Ground" and Kuniko's own re-arrangement for percussion of some Arvo Part and Steve Reich gems--"Fur Alina," "Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten," "Fratres," and "Spiegel Im Spiegel" by Part; "New York Counterpoint" by Reich. The respective composers supervised the sessions.

What is especially remarkable about this collection is Kuniko's almost legato approach to the mallet instruments, especially the marimba. Apparently the instruments were not close-miked so that gives the sound a resonance it wouldn't have quite so much out front with typical studio miking. But it is mostly how she plays, laid back and swinging yet not as sharply sounding as typical marimba soloists and ensembles sound, for example on the Reich.

She has done a great job with the re-arrangements. There is a sweet spaciousness. Her sound gives the well-known works a new life, as if you are hearing them anew. The Davies work is equally compelling.

There is something to me that sounds spatially-cosmically Japanese about her renditions, like a minimalist Japanese house--matter-of-fact yet mysterious in its presence. It's both simple in appearance yet deeply meaningful. Kuniko sounds like that to me.

This is one stunning album. Kuniko is a phenomenon and she makes the music her own in sonically moving ways. Excellent!

Arvo Part, Piano Music; Ralph van Raat, Pianist

Arvo Part no doubt occupies a rather central position as one of the world's foremost composers. He is known for many things, but his piano music is not especially one of them.

So when pianist Ralph van Raat offers up a new disk devoted exclusively to this part of his oeuvre, people like me take notice. Piano Music (Naxos 8.572525) covers most of his career: solo works begining with his Opus One, the fascinating neo-classical/modernist "Zwei Sonatinen fur Klavier" (1958/59), through other interesting works spanning the '50s, '70s. and the '00s. Finally there is the 2002 work "Lamentate: Homage to Anish Kapoor and his sculpture 'Marsyas', for piano and orchestra", for which van Raat is joined by the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic under JoAnn Falletta.

The Opus One set of sonatinas gives you the Part of not-so-latent talent, a gifted young composer who shows the influence of Prokofiev and Stravinsky. The later works increasingly reveal his own meditative style, which culminates in the fully idiomatic "Lamentate." It's a sensitively and skillfully executed program of some interesting music. It is not all brilliance and light. It does offer revealing glimpses of the composer's development, sometimes via a kind of rummage through the "attic" of earlier works, some neglected, but all well worth hearing and well performed on this disk.

The disk is worth it for the early solo works alone; it is also worth it for the performance and presence of Part's "Lamentate". Put the two aspects together and you have a highly recommended program!