Mari & Momo Kodama – Tchaikovsky: Ballet Suites For Piano Duo (2016)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz | Time – 01:03:15 minutes | 2,51 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover | © Pentatone Music B.V.
Together for the first time in the recording studio, the sisters Mari and Momo Kodama are on scintillating form in these lively arrangements of music from Tchaikovsky’s ballets Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker. In another first, the release contains the first ever recording of Arensky’s transcription of the timeless Nutcracker together with notable arrangements by Debussy and Rachmaninov.
Conceived on a grand scale, Tchaikovsky’s colourful, often passionate scores for the ballets Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker abound with graceful melodies, arresting harmonies and exuberant orchestration. The music has proved enduringly popular with audiences and rates among his most familiar and best-loved works. Composers such as Arensky, Debussy and Rachmaninov made arrangements of these works for piano, not mere reductions but wholesale realisations of the works, combining subtlety and insight with their own technical polish.
Read more
Momo Kodama – La Vallée des cloches (Ravel – Takemitsu – Messiaen) (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:05:38 minutes | 479 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM New Series
Momo Kodma’s first ECM New Series album is a marvel, a mesmerizing journey from the shimmering surfaces of Miroirs, Ravel’s piano cycle of 1904-45 to Messiaen’s Fauvette des jardins (written in 1970), a late masterpiece of piano music from the visionary composer. Kodama’s insights into Messiaen’s sound-world are remarkable as she conveys his religious feeling for nature, birdsong transformed into spiritual utterance, through the compelling, insistent piano figures. Linking the two pieces like a walkway is Toru Takemitsu’s Rain Tree Sketch (1982), music from the East informed by Western experiment. “Its opening bars” writes Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich in the liner notes, “evoke not only the rapturous crystalline chord progressions of Messiaen, but also the flashing, glittering sophistication of Ravel.
Read more
Deborah & Sarah Nemtanu, Momo & Mari Kodama – Martinů: Double Concertos (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:50 minutes | 1,10 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PentaTone
This release reunites the Kodama sisters in the studio following their scintillating recording of Tchaikovsky ballet suites for PENTATONE. In a review of a public performance of the Martinů Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra, the Ziebline journal wrote “Mari and Momoyo Kodama are extraordinary … The fingers of the Japanese musicians were flying with with diabolic ease and finesse: a stunning finale.”
Read more
Mari Kodama & Momo Kodama – Tchaikovsky: Ballet Suites for Piano Duo (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:03:28 minutes | 496 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PentaTone
Together for the first time in the recording studio, the sisters Mari and Momo Kodama are on scintillating form in these lively arrangements of music from Tchaikovsky’s ballets Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker. In another first, the release contains the first ever recording of Arensky’s transcription of the timeless Nutcracker together with notable arrangements by Debussy and Rachmaninov.
Conceived on a grand scale, Tchaikovsky’s colourful, often passionate scores for the ballets Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker abound with graceful melodies, arresting harmonies and exuberant orchestration. The music has proved enduringly popular with audiences and rates among his most familiar and best-loved works. Composers such as Arensky, Debussy and Rachmaninov made arrangements of these works for piano, not mere reductions but wholesale realisations of the works, combining subtlety and insight with their own technical polish.
Read more
Momo Kodama – Point And Line: Debussy & Hosokawa Etudes (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:19:20 minutes | 1,07 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM New Series
Born in Osaka, educated at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris, Momo Kodama is well-placed to approach music from both Eastern and Western vantage points, as she does in this album which interweaves etudes of Claude Debussy (1862-1918) and Toshio Hosokawa (born 1955).
Both composers have similarly been border-crossers. Debussy, pointing to music of the future, looked to the Orient for inspiration. Hosokawa has combined aspects of Japanese and European tradition in his contemporary compositions. Momo Kodama: “In the music of Toshio Hosokawa I find elements close to Debussy: the freedom of form and tone colour, the sense of poetic design, with a wide range of lyricism and dynamics, between meditation and virtuoso development, between light and shade, between large gestures and minimalist refinement.”
„Point and Line“ is the pianist’s second ECM album and follows the widely-praised ‘La vallée des cloches’, with music of Ravel, Takemitsu and Messiaen, of which American Record Guide noted: “Kodama’s impeccable technique and facility for crystalline sounds makes for a mesmerizing program.”
Read more
Mari & Momo Kodama, Deborah & Sarah Nemtanu – Martinu: Double Concertos for Violin & Piano (2018)
SACD Rip | SACD ISO | DST64 2.0 & 5.1 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 62:37 minutess | Digital Booklet | 2,87 GB
or FLAC 2.0 Stereo (converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/96 kHz | Digital Booklet | 1,21 GB
Features Stereo & Multichannel Surround Sound | PentaTone Classics # PTC 5186 658
Bohuslav Martinů’s distinctive musical voice, which infuses the great Czech tradition with modern idioms, is showcased in this captivating survey of his concertante works, performed by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Marseille conducted by Lawrence Foster. The Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra is a lively and rhythmic tour de force. Breezily energetic and relentless, it is full of jazzy inflections and high speed fireworks, pausing only in the tranquillity of the slow movement for moments of serene calm. By contrast, the Concerto for Two Violins and Orchestra is a warm, lyrical work in the Romantic tradition. With its intricate and interweaving solo lines, expansive melodies and dance-like syncopations it’s an engaging work of considerable charm which deserves a wider audience. The Rhapsody-Concerto for Viola and Orchestra is a dreamily nostalgic work whose simple melodies, radiant lyricism and soaring viola line make it one of the 20th century’s most performed viola concertos.
Read more
Momo Kodama – Point And Line: Debussy, Hosokawa (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:19:20 minutes | 1,07 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM New Series
Born in Osaka and educated at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris, Momo Kodama is well-placed to approach music from both Eastern and Western vantage points, as she does in this album which interweaves etudes of Claude Debussy (1862-1918) and Toshio Hosokawa (born 1955). Both composers have similarly been border-crossers. Debussy, pointing to music of the future, looked to the Orient for inspiration. Hosokawa has long combined aspects of Japanese and European tradition in his contemporary compositions. Momo Kodama’s insights into Toshio Hosokawa’s sound-world are profound. She is one of the outstanding performers of his work, and the composer has dedicated several works to her, including four of the six Etudes for piano included here, all composed between 2011 and 2013: “Caligraphy, Haiku, 1 Line”, “Lied, Melody”, “Ayatori, Magic by 2 Hands, 3 Lines” and “Anger”.
Read more