Nocturne: Otaka & Mehmari Works for Cello and Piano

Nocturne: Otaka & Mehmari Works for Cello and Piano is an album that suggests how, through a shared musical language, distance can feel strangely close. Available at NativeDSD in Stereo and 5.1 Channel Surround Sound DSD plus 5.1.4 Channel Dolby Atmos TrueHD Immersive Audio and 5.1.4 Channel Discrete Immersive Audio.  Japan and Brazil lie almost on opposite sides of the planet, yet their histories are deeply intertwined — Brazil is home to the largest community of Japanese descendants in the world, numbering more than two million. In that spirit, Brazilian cellist Lucas Garcia Muramoto and Japanese pianist Yu Nitahara — who first met as students in Salzburg — bring together the music of two composers who, although born 66 years apart and on opposite sides of the planet, find a natural meeting point in their approach to the European classical tradition, each with their own cultural identity that remains unmistakably present. Hisatada Otaka (1911–1951) was among the first Japanese musicians to seek advanced training in Europe. He studied composition and conducting in Vienna during the 1930s and appeared there as a conductor with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra as well as the Berlin Philharmonic — a remarkable achievement for a Japanese musician at the time. He composed the Nocturne for cello and piano in 1942, shortly after returning to Japan. The piece was written for the cellist Takashi Kurata, who had studied in Paris, premiered the work, and was both Otaka’s brother-inlaw and a close musical companion. André Mehmari (b. 1977) has developed a musical language that moves freely between classical composition, Brazilian musical traditions, and improvisation. The Suíte Brasileira is inspired by musical traditions from different regions of Brazil, such as the Seresta, Choro, and Baião. The suite became closely associated with the cellist Antonio Meneses, to whom the work was dedicated and who recorded it alongside the composer himself. The third movement, Frevo refers to the dances of Carnival in Recife, the hometown of Meneses. Recorded at Estúdio Monteverdi in São Paulo, surrounded by the Atlantic rainforest, the album was captured in immersive audio by recording producer and balance engineer Gustavo Cândido for ADS. It preserves not only the sound of the instruments, but also the acoustic space itself, bringing that sense of presence beyond the recording studio.

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Lucas Garcia Muramoto, Cello Yu Nitahara, Piano