Moore gives UK premiere of Fujikura’s Vast Ocean II with CBSO and Yamada

Peter Moore was the soloist in the UK premiere of Dai Fujikura’s Vast Ocean II, performed with Kazuki Yamada and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Belfast-born Moore, now with a decade-long stint at the London Symphony Orchestra, is described as one of the great champions of his instrument.

Fujikura’s Vast Ocean II is a reworking of his 2005 trombone concerto and takes Stanisław Lem’s novel Solaris as its starting point: the orchestra as a teeming, sentient ocean and the trombone as a human adventurer. Fujikura joked in the pre-concert talk, “He’s George Clooney,” while the score itself unfolds as a pointillist canvas of glinting sounds and textures that only rarely coalesce into conventional development, preferring to circle, echo, dissolve and re-form.

Moore was praised for making his instrument sing, finding shifting colours in the score’s insistent repeated notes and coaxing slides into vocal sighs and howls, while Yamada provided a rich, elusive backdrop. The reviewer questioned whether the piece adds up to more than a sequence of gorgeous sonic episodes, writing, “I’m not sure,” and noting that Fujikura remains “the master of the musical unanswered question.” After the interval the programme moved to Mahler’s Symphony No 1, which suited Yamada’s described heart-on-sleeve, instinctive approach.

Key Topics

Culture, Peter Moore, Dai Fujikura, Kazuki Yamada, Cbso, Vast Ocean Ii