Yasunshi Akutagawa Memorial Orchestra Nipponica

A concert of four concertos for orchestra. The title of the concert is "Pros and Cons? Pringsheim's Ochestracon". The conductor is Ichiro Nohira, the music advisor of Orchestra Nipponica.
Klaus Pringsheim studied at the University of Munich, while at the same time publishing symphonic poems and piano concertos. Later, aspiring to become a conductor, he became a student of Mahler in Vienna and began training as a chorépétitore. It was during this time that he became acquainted with B. Walter and O. Klemperer. After serving as general director of the Staatsoper Bremen, he moved to Berlin, where he was invited to conduct Mahler's Symphonies Nos. 6 and 9 with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra shortly before the death of conductor A. Nikisch. He also conducted the Mahler Cycle from 1923 to 1924. In the 1950s and 1960s, Pingsheim was frequently invited by the Berlin Philharmonic to conduct works by Mahler, Matsudaira Takanori, Mayuzumi Toshiro, and others.
In 1931, he was invited to Japan by the Tokyo School of Music (now the Faculty of Music of Tokyo University of the Arts). Immediately, he was eager to perform Mahler's works in succession in Japan, and conducted Symphony No. 5 in 1932, No. 2 in 1933, No. 6 in 1934, and No. 3 in 1935, greatly influencing the works of Yasuaki Abe, Kazuo Yamada, and Nao Shibata.
Pringsheim composed the Concerto for Orchestra to inspire Japanese composers. However, when it was premiered in 1935, it was severely criticized by Japanese composers and critics. It was later performed again under the baton of Kazuo Yamada, but the performance score was lost, forgotten, and lay dormant for 50 years.
In his lifetime, Akira Miyoshi never used the form of a "symphony," and was the first composer in Japan to adopt the title "Concerto for Orchestra" (1963). In 1970, Yutaka Oguri, known as the "Bartók of Osaka," was probably the second Japanese composer to write a work with the same title. Bartók's predecessor, the composer Z. Kodály, composed his "Concerto for Orchestra" (1940) on commission from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Was the criticism of Pringsheim's "orchestra concerto" at the time of its premiere justified? We invite you to find out for yourself!