Conductor: Kazuhiko Komatsu Isotaro Sugata: Peaceful Dance of Two Dragons Shin-Ichiro Ikebe: Symphony No. 3 (“Ego Phano”) Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5 in D minor, op. 47 This evening’s guest conductor from Japan began his career thirty years ago, when he first conducted the Tokyo NHK Symphony Orchestra. He is currently the permanent guest conductor of the Prague Symphony Orchestra but in recent years, has also worked several times with the St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra led by Yuri Temirkanov. In the first half of his Budapest concert we will hear one work each from two lesser known Japanese composers. Isotaro Sugata (1907–1952) in his work Peaceful Dance of Two Dragons was aiming for a synthesis of Western music and traditional Japanese elements. This is apparent in the scoring: he triples the number of woodwind and also employs some traditional Japanese percussion instruments. Shin-Ichiro Ikebe is a living composer who was born in Tokyo in 1943 and he also has written the music for numerous films. He composed his Symphony No. 3 in 1984. One of the major turning points in the career of Dmitri Shostakovich came with his Symphony No. 5 written in 1937. With its distilled, nobly mature tone and simple creative devices, it heralds the new style which was to characterise the composer’s later symphonies. Its fundamental seriousness alludes to thoughts that were continually preoccupying Shostakovich: that people can defeat the vicissitudes of life by fighting against them and through ethical behaviour.

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