Two years ago, the conductor, recorder and cornett player Yoshimichi Hamada was awarded the 53rd Suntory Music Award, in recognition of his unique and wide-ranging musical activities. In particular, the study and promotion of nanban ongaku: music introduced to Japan by the Portuguese and Spanish in the late 16th century. Also cited was Hamada’s concert series on theme of Der Fluyten Lust-hof (The Garden of Flute Delights), including 17th-century Dutch recorder music by Jacob van Eyck, and his productions of Baroque operas and Handel’s Messiah.
Hamada is the fourth generation of a Japanese musical dynasty. His great-grandfather was Yonejiro Suzuki, the founder of first private music college in Japan, the Toyo Music Academy (the forerunner of the Tokyo College of Music). His father, Noriteru Hamada (1929–86) was a conductor who also founded the Japan Oratorio Association, instrumental in promoting oratorio performances in Japan. The Association orchestra even included the young Crown Prince Naruhito, now Emperor of Japan, who took part as a viola player.
How did growing up in such an environment influence Hamada as a musician? “In truth, my father had his hands full with his own activities, so I wasn’t given a special musical education,” Hamada says. “He told me that if I wanted to play an instrument, I should go to a proper teacher, and he never taught me how to conduct. I played the piano and violin, but in the end chose the trumpet. I watched my father rehearse the orchestra and choir from a young age, and he always took me to his concerts.”
He remembers a story his father recounted about his youthful friendship with Toru Takemitsu. “My father studied composition with Saburo Moroi and cello with Hideo Saito from an early age. My father’s younger brother also studied the cello, and one of his friends was Toru Takemitsu. On hearing that Takemitsu wanted to study music, my uncle brought him to the house, and my father gave him composition lessons. I think my father was around 17, and Takemitsu about 16. One morning early, Takemitsu woke my father and said, ‘onii-chan [“big brother”], listen, these are the sounds I hear’, and played them on the piano.”
“At the time, Takemitsu used to address my father affectionately as ‘onii-chan’. The music Takemitsu played on the piano on that occasion was in a similar vein to his later works. Realizing that there are geniuses in the world, my father gave up composing and became a conductor.”
How did Hamada discover period instruments? In 1975, his father founded an orchestra, the Bach Collegium Tokyo (not to be confused with Bach Collegium Japan) and served as its music director. The orchestra initially played on modern instruments, but later switched to period instruments – a change potentially influenced by Hamada’s own youthful musicmaking.
“At junior high school I played in the school brass band and when we were looking for ensemble works to perform in a competition, I came across Renaissance music such as brass ensemble pieces by Holborne and Gabrieli. I immediately fell in love with this kind of music. Later, I found out that these works were not composed for modern brass instruments, but at the time, there weren’t many people who played early music instruments. However, when I went to high school, my music teacher was a pupil of Hans Martin Linde, the German recorder player.”
When Hamada was in his teens in the 1970s, Japan saw a boom in enthusiasm for the recorder, spurred on by visits from Frans Brüggen and Hans Martin Linde. Hamada was keen to study abroad, but while his father encouraged his son to pursue a career as a musician, he also told him not to go abroad until he became proficient enough in Japan. “Really I wanted to go abroad straight out of high school and become a musician without borders,” Yoshimichi says. “But my father opposed it, and said even if I studied abroad, if I didn’t do something for Japan, it would be for nothing.”
Hamada enrolled at the Toho Gakuen School of Music, but soon after graduating went to Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Switzerland to study medieval music theory, the recorder and cornett – gaining experiences performing with Bruce Dickey, René Jacobs, and others. He then returned to Japan to form the period music ensemble Anthonello. At the same time as becoming a virtuoso performer on the recorder and cornett, he established a choir and began conducting oratorios. Hamada says, “I found myself doing the same thing as my father.”
One can point to three distinctive features in Hamada’s music-making: off-beat rhythms, agogic accents, and improvisation. Each creates a strong feeling of momentum, vibrancy and dynamism that has become a hallmark of his performances. (Such characteristics can be heard in the music of Jordi Savall and René Jacobs too.) “As I pursued the essence of music, I arrived at this approach, and it has since become ever stronger,” Hamada says. “I believe that playing with an off-beat, primarily rhythmic feel is the way it would have been historically too. And this sense of beat is not only rhythmic but can also produce natural rubato.”
One of Hamada’s life-long pursuits has been the study of the so-called Tenshō Embassy – four Japanese boys who went to meet the Pope in 1585 – as well as nanban ongaku, Western music brought by the Portuguese and Spanish to Japan.
During the Spanish and Portuguese Age of Discovery in the mid-1500s, the Portuguese were the first Europeans to make contact with the Japanese, drifting ashore to Tanegashima Island in Kyushu. Christian missionaries soon followed, together with an influx of nanban (or exotically European) culture into Japan – including music. Over 450 years ago, Japanese Christians sang chants and played Western instruments, including viols, lutes, and recorders. It was a musical practice that would later be abruptly discontinued with the prohibition of Christianity by the Tokugawa Shogunate in the 17th century.
In 1582, Christian daimyō lords of Japan sent the Tenshō Embassy – including the four young Japanese boys – to Europe. Their eight-year journey included audiences with the Pope and King Philip II of Spain. Hamada is deeply interested in the music the Tenshō mission would have encountered in Europe, and how Westerners of the time would have responded to music of Asia.
“You can find glimpses of Western music in Japanese traditional music of the time, just like in our language and cuisine,” Hamada says. “Indeed, some Renaissance music of Spain and Portugal is strikingly similar to Japanese folk and children’s songs.”
At the commemorative concert of the Suntory Hall Music Award in August, Hamada will perform Handel’s opera Rinaldo in a semi-staged production directed by Keiichi Nakamura, with dance by the nihon-buyo (Japanese classical dance) master Ichisuke Nishikawa. The opera, based on Tasso’s epic poem, centres on the story of the Crusade, and the conflict of the Christians and Saracens over Jerusalem. It’s one of Handel’s most popular operas.
“In current interpretations, it has become customary to perform Handel’s secco recitatives in a style similar to ‘speaking’,” Hamada explains, “but in this production, we bring the ‘singing’ element to the fore, like the recitar cantando in early Baroque operas. Note values will be either sung as written, or deformed, sometimes creating a rhythmic flow resembling modern rap music.”
Opera productions have been among the most important turning points of Hamada’s career. “Certainly the ‘Opera Fresca’ series I started in 2013, a project to stage Baroque operas by Caccini and Monteverdi, among others. I was also very fortunate in having the opportunity of performing with Concerto Palatino when I had only just started on the cornett. I also performed many times in René Jacobs’ orchestra. Taking part in the recording of Castello’s music with Ensemble La Fenice, a wind ensemble that specialized in early Baroque music, was also an important event in my career. Later, I had the chance to play with great jazz musicians, such as the Japanese jazz trumpeter Terumasa Hino and the Manhattan Jazz Orchestra.”
What next for Hamada’s own group Anthonello, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year? “I would like to continue to perform opera, from its beginnings up to the Classical period, also to pursue my exploration of nanban ongaku, and of course to keep performing as a recorder and cornett player,” he says. On a personal note, I would like to see Hamada broaden his conducting career and appear with other orchestras and ensembles.
Yoshimichi Hamada and Anthonello perform Handel’s Rinaldo at Suntory Hall on 17th August.
This article was sponsored by Suntory Hall.
This article is also available in Japanese.
