Japan is a great trading nation, one of the major customers for the Panama Canal, and a very generous foreign aid benefactor for Panama. Japanese-Panamanian relations have their occasional irritating factors, but that always happens between old and close friends, especially when they have long-standing business ties. We work these things out because we’re friends.
The Japanese value their ties to Panama and to the whole region. These are being emphasized throughout Central America and Panama all year long by way of “Central America - Japan Year 2005.”
The Japanese strengthen their ties with us in many ways, one of which is in the field of music. Last year the Japan Defense Forces Maritime Training Squadron (i.e., though postwar political sensibilities prohibit such terminology, the Japanese naval academy) band played at the University of Panama’s Curundu Dome with the Banda Republicana, before an audience largely composed of members of bombero, police and high school band members. They showed us some traditional Japanese drumming, then prowess at variations on the international classics, and also played Panamanian music and the early 60s popular Japanese hit “Sukiyaki.” It was a good concert.
On February 4 and 5 --- the Friday and Saturday of Carnival, which had both advantages and disadvantages depending on how you want to look at it --- the Japanese brought us a great concert.
Pianist Yuko Fujii and her younger sister, flautist Kaori Fujii came to the National Theater to play variations on the classics. The tickets were free and they were all gone a few days before the show, but it seems that the Japanese Embassy gave a lot of them to notables in Panama’s government and society, who chose to go elsewhere for Carnival instead. Thus there were a lot of empty seats for the Friday show, and a lot of foreigners in the seats that were occupied. That was a little bit of a shame in certain respects, but not such a bad thing after all. I didn’t see any women wearing furry dead animals or hear anyone faking an Oxonian accent or sniff any high society airs. Yes, this was an upscale and highly educated audience, but it was a crowd attracted to the Teatro Nacional to appreciate the arts rather than be seen in the right company.
And the sisters Fujii gave us lots to appreciate.
Yuko was one of these kids who started playing piano at a young age --- three, so the playbill claimed. She’s also a jazz drummer, and she has a musical education at Japan’s most prestigious places.
(Understand as well that Japanese industry has a way of taking things that were invented in the west, perfecting their production in all manner of innovative ways, then putting their products on the world market and beating all competitors. Without saying a word, Yuko Fujii played her part for Japan’s foreign commerce by playing her beautiful sounds on a Yamaha piano. Yes, Japan is a world power in musical instrument manufacturing too.)
In her mid-20s, Kaori Fujii has left a larger international footprint than her big sister. The two of them together have had a few notable international successes, like when they won second prize for piano-flute duets at the 2003 Friedrich Kuhlau International Flute Competition in Germany, but it’s Kaori who had the more prestigious and more international education, having studied in Stuttgart after having graduated from the same Fine Arts Department of the National University of Tokyo that her sister did and also having studied under such internationally renowned musicians as Sir James Galway. Along the way Kaori learned English, which is what she spoke in the introductions of the pieces that she and her sister played at the Teatro Nacional.
The sisters’ first set was late 19th and early 20th century stuff, beginning with Borne’s “Carmen Fantasy,” an adaptation and extrapolation of Bizet’s opera “Carmen.” Then they played Sergei Rachmaninov’s “Vocalise,” a wordless 1912 piece for piano and voice, adapted here for piano and flute. There followed the 20th century Swiss composer’s “Ballade,” Ravel’s “Pièce en Forme de Habanera” (another work originally written for piano and voice) and American composer Robert Muczynski’s “Sonata for Flute & Piano Opus 14.”
That latter work closed out the first half of the concert with an overlay of jazz riffs on a classical sonata format. Earlier there had been hints of the jazz influence that characterized much of 20th century classical music, particularly that which emanated from the United States, most especially in this set with the occasionally dissonant and frequently syncopated piano notes that Yuko was playing.
Ah, but after the intermission they really emphasized the jazz influence, in the music as well as the program notes. Most of the the things they played in the second set were either composition or arrangements of classics by one Bruce Stark, an American who resides in Japan and who has written or arranged a number of things specifically for Kaori and Yuko Fujii. As in his arrangement of a piece from Bizet’s “Carmen,” a couple of movements from Stark’s 1980s “American Suite,” a song Stark wrote for Kaori on the occasion of her 23d birthday in 2002, and Stark’s arrangement of J.S. Bach’s canonical “Invention No. 13.” The second set ended with the Latin American flavor of Mike Mower’s “Sonata Latina,” which featured movements featuring salsa, rumba and tango, and bossa nova inspirations respectively.
Ever since Japan opened its doors to western influences, both traditionalists at home and competitors abroad have from time to time derided its borrowings from other cultures. But much like the Japanese naval musicians did with some of their selections last year, Yuko and Kaori Fujii made the counterpoint with a traditional Japanese piece for their encore. Such a powerful understatement!
Although their fame and success has been primarily in Japan, Yuko and Kaori Fujii are world class musicians. Kaori is very clearly a member of a select few flautists at the very top of that world class. If there is a classical concert that tops the ones given by the Fujii sisters in Panama this year, this will be a very rare and wonderful time for this country’s music fans.
I’d say that the Japanese Embassy and the Fundacion Japon acted wisely and successfully to consolidate their country’s friendship with Panama, and enormously enriched the already lively Panamanian cultural scene, by bringing Kaori and Yuko Fujii here. And I hope that, even beyond the sancocho that Kaori said she liked, Panama showed the sisters enough good things that they’ll want to come back.
Also in this section:
Cool Internet sites
Classical duets at the Teatro Nacional
