Each year, the City of Tokyo invites the Japan Federation of Musicians to organize a 10-week festival of concerts, opera, ballet, popular and traditional music -- the Tokyo Performing Arts Festival. It presents all the city's major performing companies, including concerts by each of the city's nine symphony orchestras.

The series, now in its 31st year, is unique in the world. Firstly, no other city in the world has nine major symphony orchestras. Secondly, in no other city will you find competing orchestras collaborating cooperatively on the same card.

The metropolitan government owns a first-class concert hall, the Tokyo Metropolitan Arts Space, which it presses into service for this series. The ticket price is kept accessible to the general public, a boon in this city, and the programs and featured artists are generally appealing to a broad audience.

Tokyo City Philharmonie Kangen Gakudan

Feb. 4, Taijiro Iimori conducting in Tokyo Geijutsu Gekijo -- "Carnival" Overture, Op. 92, Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra in B Minor, Op. 104, featuring Nobuko Yamazaki; Symphony No. 8 in G Major, Op. 88 "English" (Antonin Leopold Dvorak, 1841-1904)

The Tokyo City Philharmonic Orchestra under Taijiro Iimori presented an all-Dvorak program that was a cut above the programs which have been presented in this popular series during past years. The chosen works were attractive and accessible, even to the novice listener the series hopes to attract. For the orchestra too, Dvorak's music is playable, stylish and rewarding to perform.

The "New World" is the ninth and last symphony from the Czech master's fertile pen, but it seems to be the only one we get to hear in this great city. This made Iimori's very fine reading of Dvorak's next-to-last symphony, composed for one of the composer's frequent trips to England, particularly welcome. The music accords well with Iimori's own romantic nature; he had the conceptual architecture of the work entirely in his head and conducted the work without score. This goes beyond the practice of hardworking conductors who diligently memorize the score in all its details and then proceed mechanically from detail to detail. A good conductor characterizes the parts so as to define their relationship to the overall form.

Iimori has worked very carefully with the TCPO, the youngest and least rich of the city's nine, toward perfecting ensemble precision and dynamic balance. Its progress during his tenure has indeed been remarkable.

The "Carnival" overture is not played as often as I feel it should be, for it can be an exciting work. This performance was exciting, well conceived, brilliant and suave. I was captivated by the obvious involvement of several of the players, especially including the associate principal cellist, principal second violin, principal contrabass, and the entire TCPO contrabass section.

Tokyo-to Kokyo Gakudan

Feb. 16, Jean-Pascal Tortelier conducting in Tokyo Geijutsu Gekijo -- "Symphonie Espagnole" for Violin and Orchestra in D Minor, Op. 21 (Edouard-Victoire-Antoine Lalo, 1823-92), featuring Mie Kobayashi; "Symphonie Fantastique" in C Major, Op. 14a (Louis-Hector Berlioz, 1803-69)

The Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra under Jean-Pascal Tortelier presented an imaginative linking of two romantic works, "Symphonie Espagnole" and "Symphonie Fantastique," an attractive coupling I had not previously encountered. Paris-educated Tortelier likewise appeared to be a canny choice to conduct this program.

Mie Kobayashi has grown in confidence and depth in the decade since winning the Long Thibault violin competition. It was very nice indeed to hear the strength and sureness of her playing in the Lalo. The certainty became her, and she made the violin sing.

Conducting from memory, Tortelier gave a very fine reading of the Berlioz, perhaps the most often performed symphony in the entire French repertoire. He showed himself to be a melody conductor, turning foursquare to the first violins to make them sound together and comfortable in the rippling cascades of notes.

Over the past decade, French orchestras seem to have lost altogether their once distinctive sound and style. They have been making use of instruments from many countries. They have acquired young players who have studied, well, everywhere. They have played under jet-setting conductors accustomed to hearing to the sound and style of many orchestras, who have become cosmopolitan in their demands. Presumably Tortelier is of the modern school of France. Tall and athletic, he was actively involved with the music (or at least with the melodies) and drew the players thoroughly into the performance, producing an aggressive palette of over-full sonorities. It was many things, but it was not music making in the French tradition.