Paul Chihara (b. 1938) has a long and well-established career that has taken him many places in the music world, from jazz to classical scores, to writing film music and even authoring a text on it. His music is extremely personal in the sense that everything he writes seems to have a component of memory and experience. The works on this disc prove no different, often born out of the experience of being a Japanese-American who viewed the difficulties he was going through at different times as a child in a completely different way than his parents. For instance, the emotional and affecting Minidoka, named after the internment camp he was put in that separated his family for four years during WWII, is a rich emotive tapestry of the sounds and feelings associated with that period, many of them exciting and adventurous for so young a child, including a rather haunting quote (literally done) from a recording of a pop song that was played a lot in the camp. The scoring for this excellent work (clarinet, viola, harp, and percussion) leads to its dream-like qualities of time gone by, and the mind’s ability to turn tragic circumstances into warm remembrances.
Ain’t No Sunshine dismantles the well-known tune, and in fact doesn’t even quote it directly, in the most esoteric piece on this recital, yet at the same time profoundly original and intellectually stimulating, for careful listening attempts to detect at least a snippet of the tune or something related to it, which of course never appears. Musically it is still very sound, though I thought it the least of the offerings here. The Piano Quintet is a superb work in all respects, drawing on Debussy, Ravel, jazz inflections, and a lush sentimentality that takes a front row seat right near the heart from the very start. The second movement Vivace is especially memorable.
An Afternoon on the Perfume River refers to that body of water in Vietnam, quietly and beautifully rolling forward while the destruction and atrocity of the activities along the shore go blissfully unnoticed, almost like the river itself asserts its predominance in anything resembling the history of that beleaguered, ravished, and gorgeous land. All of the performers here are first class, especially Roge and the Ysaye, and this makes an excellent introduction to this worthy composer if you haven’t already encountered him before.
— Steven Ritter
