Yuzo Toyama | en

Yuzo Toyama (外山雄三) was born in Tokyo in 1931. He studied composition under Kan-ichi Shimofusa, a pupil of Paul Hindemith and a conducting student of Kurt Wöss and Wilhelm Loibner, both of whom conducted the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo in the 1950s. Toyama has served as the principal conductor of a number of orchestras in Japan. As a composer he has been under the influence of Béla Bartók and Dmitri Shostakovich in particular, and like Zoltán Kodály he attaches great importance to the use of folk melodies in his works. .