Hisatada Otaka: Cello Concerto in A minor

Hisatada Otaka (1911-1951)

Cello Concerto in A minor

I. Allegro energico e passionato 0:00
II. Lento cantabile con variazioni 13:55
III. Adagio espressivo - Allegro con brio 25:49

Ko Iwasaki, cello
Japan Philharmonic Orchestra
Hiroshi Wakasugi, conductor

Hisatada Otaka (1911 - 1951) was a Japanese composer and conductor, father of Otaka Tadaaki. He went to Vienna before graduating from high school and received his earliest music education there. In 1932 he returned to Tokyo, where he studied composition with Klaus Pringheim. He was back in Vienna in 1934, and there he studied composition with Marx and conducting with Weingartner at the Music Academy, while taking private lessons with Franz Moser. In 1936 he won a Weingartner Prize for the orchestral Nihon kumikyoku, and after his graduation in 1938 he was active as a conductor until he returned to Japan in 1940 and became the regular conductor of the Japan SO. As a composer he was an advocate of German Romanticism, combined with certain characteristics of Japanese nationalism; he wrote exclusively for instruments. After his early death the orchestra he had served as conductor instituted an Otaka Prize for composition in his memory.