The UK premiere of Dai Fujikura's trombone concerto, Vast Ocean II, took place at Symphony Hall, Birmingham, performed by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Kazuki Yamada with soloist Peter Moore. The work, a reworking of Fujikura's 2005 concerto, was inspired by Stanisław Lem's sci-fi novel Solaris, with the orchestra representing a sentient ocean and the trombone a human explorer.
Moore, who first gained prominence as the youngest ever winner of BBC Young Musician in 2008, brought out the colours and textures of the elusive score, making his instrument sing through shifting repeated notes and vocal-like slides. Yamada conjured a rich backdrop, though the piece remained a sequence of sonic episodes rather than a conventional development, typical of Fujikura's style of musical unanswered questions.
The second half of the concert featured Mahler's Symphony No 1, a work suited to Yamada's instinctive approach. The second movement's Ländler swayed with portamenti, while the finale delivered thunderous timpani and a triumphant climax. However, the third movement lacked the bleakness needed to balance the symphony's optimism, missing the necessary counterweight in its grotesque, klezmer-inflected theme.
