Tuesday Tones

Atsutada Otaka (1944-2021) was a Japanese composer and teacher…and that is just about all of the biographical information I have been able to find about him. A longer (but not by much) biography can be found here.

The work in question today is a large-scale piece for organ and orchestra. I’m always surprised that organ-and-orchestra is not a combination encountered more often; the organ is, after all, the only single instrument that can stand toe-to-toe with the modern symphony orchestra in terms of the sheer sonic output it can generate. If your main impression of works for organ and orchestra is Saint-Saens’s Organ Symphony, then this piece, with its fiery dissonances, massive crashing chords, and slicing sonorities will come as something of a shock. It doesn’t get more purely modern than this.

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