Viola Space in Tokyo is one of the world’s most important musical festivals dedicated to the viola and the music composed for it. Founded by Nobuko Imai – well-known to BIS followers as well as to lovers of the viola – it celebrates its 10th anniversary, and BIS was invited to document some of the 150 works that have been performed over the years. The program spans over more than 70 years, and the list of composer includes Schnittke, Per Nørgård, Penderecki and Oedoen Partos. Nobuko Imai herself performs two of the most exciting works on the two discs: György Ligeti’s Sonata for Viola Solo and Toshio Hosokawa’s Voyage VI for Viola and Strings. This last piece was composed only last year, and is dedicated Nobuko Imai. It forms part of a series of concertos “in which the soloist symbolizes man while the ensemble represents the universe, nature and world that surrounds us within and without”, in the composer’s own description. Among these a modern classic such as György Kurtág’s Hommage à R. Sch. – in which violist Junji Suganuma is joined by a clarinet and a piano – may be mentioned, as well as Viola, Viola, a constantly surprising duo by George Benjamin.

Nobuko Imai has been a leading viola player since the early 1990s. She studied at Tokyo's Toho Gakuen Music School before continuing her training in the United States at both Yale University and the Juilliard School. Following her graduation from Juilliard, she triumphantly vanquished all competitors to win the highest prizes at the Munich and Geneva international competitions. She is a former member of the prestigious Vermeer Quartet, known for sharp performances of the Mozart and Beethoven chamber repertoire.

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Anyone who loves twentieth century music, who loves English music, or who just plain loves music will love this collection of the music of Michael Tippett. Culled from previously issued but long out-of-print Philips, London, Argo, and l'Oiseau-Lyre LPs, most of these recordings were world premieres made in close consultation with the composer and in the hands of conductors Colin Davis, Georg Solti, Neville Marriner, pianist Paul Crossley, and the Lindsay String Quartet, they receive what can fairly be described as definitive performances. From the ecstatic lyricism of the Suite for Double String Orchestra of 1939 through the luminous vitality of the First Symphony of 1945, the radiant sensuality of the Ritual Dances of 1955, the blues-based modernism of the Third Symphony of 1972, to the glistening transcendentalism of the Fourth Symphony of 1977, Tippett's unique fusion of line, drive, color, and form is performed throughout with passionate dedication and absolute faith in the music's greatness.

Of all the reconstructions prompted by the 1991 Mozart jamboree, Philip Wilby’s recreation of the Violin and Piano Concerto of 1778 was the most worthwhile. Wilby skilfully completed the 120-bar fragment of the first movement and took the slow movement and finale from the unusually brilliant, ‘public’ D major Violin Sonata, K306. There are problems – not least of dates – with Wilby’s thesis that the Sonata is the ‘last resting-place’ of the projected double concerto. But the three movements certainly make a satisfying entity. Midori and Eschenbach give an immensely polished reading, phrasing with unfailing subtlety and sophistication.

Apparently a staple in Russia, the music of Taneyev exists on the fringes of the repertoire in the West, something that should be rectified–and will be if this superb CD made by a starry cast of performers gets the attention it deserves. He’s a Romantic composer, but hardly of the heart-on-sleeve variety, since he was a master of counterpoint and firmly encased his Romantic impulses in a well-fitted classical jacket. Sometimes he makes you think of a more modern, pungent Brahms with a Russian accent.

Instrumental transcriptions of Johann Sebastian Bach's keyboard music have been legion witness just how many there are of The Musical Offering and The Art of Fugue and yet very few of them seem to catch on. One notable exception is violinist and conductor Dmitry Sitkovetsky's 1985 trio arrangement of the Goldberg Variations, made to observe Bach's tercentenary and as a memorial to pianist Glenn Gould, more readily associated with the Goldbergs than perhaps any other musician aside from Johann Gottlieb Goldberg himself.