This album contains several works widely enjoyed in Japan. Toyama’s work makes use of traditional kabuki percussion in a series of popular Japanese folk melodies. Konoye’s Etenraku is a modern orchestral arrangement of ancient Japanese imperial music and was in Leopold Stokowski’s orchestral repertoire. Ifukube’s Japanese Rhapsody, which was first performed in Boston, evokes the atmosphere of the traditional Japanese Matsuri (festivity), with striking orchestration. The work was admired by such figures as Sibelius, Roussel and Ibert. Akutagawa’s crisp idiom reminds us of Prokofiev and Kabalevsky. Koyama’s brilliant piece Kobiki-Uta, consisting of variations on a woodcutters’ folk-song, seems to have been written under the influence of Ravel and Stravinsky, and Yoshimatsu’s work belongs to the neo-romantic school, but also echoes the music of Takemitsu.