Kosaku Yamada Essentials

One of Japan’s most culturally significant composers, Kosaku Yamada resourcefully incorporated his home country’s folk stories and musical idioms into a Western-influenced classical music style. Born in Tokyo in 1886, Yamada completed his music education in Berlin and spent time conducting American and European orchestras. He was a prolific composer of a wide variety of songs that became standards for vocalists and instrumentalists alike. The enduring classic of this repertoire is the aching, pastoral “Aka-Tonbo,” which translates to “Red Dragonfly.” Yamada also integrated traditional Japanese instruments into music composed for Western-style orchestra, most notably in his Symphony “Inno Meiji” and his Nagauta Symphony.