Homeward Symphony

20+ years ago, while travelling the interstate highway system and listening to NPR, I heard a Japanese symphonic work on Public Radio; I have searched for a recording of this work ever since in vain. I do not know the composer, but the work was entitled the 'Homeward Symphony.' Does anyone know this work or anything about it? Any information would be appreciated. It must be recorded somewhere... if not commercially, then on a concert program tape. Maybe someone at Public Radio International or NPR would recall this, or someone possibly has a dub of it in their home library.

Jim S

I'm not trying to be dense, but is it possible that this was Lemminkainen's Homeward Journey from the Four Legends by Sibelius?

I can easily imagine one of those chardonnay-laced announcers mangling this into 'Lemin Kinen's Homeward Symphony.' There is, after all, an orchestra in Japan called 'Saito Kinen.'

It was one of these idiots who once pronounced the word plebiscite as 'plea biscuit.'

As you may have gathered, I am no fan of classical FM.

KUSC appears to have an idiotic policy of insisting ALL composition titles must be announced in English. (Well, there are a very few exceptions, such as Debussy's 'La Mer,' which haven't fallen victim to this nonsense.) While I can understand the ostensible motivation, which is to appeal to an audience for whom English is likely the primary or secondary language, one can imagine many situations where a piece really is best-known by its original title, so that an interested listener would have to get somebody in a record store to figure it out. And we all know how likely that is!

One of the worst examples of this was when Schumann's 'Davidsbundlertänzer' were rendered as 'Dances from the Tribe of David.' I imagine that Schumann would have been puzzled ... Liszt and family would doubtless have been considerably less than pleased.

Can someone give me the e-mail address of the original poster of the question (JKS)? I have the answer to his question. The Symphony he is looking for is:

YUZO TOYAMA: Symphony 'Heimkehr' or 'Home-coming' (1965) -Yuzo Toyama conducts the NHK Symphony Orchestra - It is in my collection on an NHK stereo transcription disc.