Performers
- Momo Kodama piano
Programme
Olivier Messiaen Le Traquet rieur (book 7, mov. 12) from Catalogue d’oiseaux [10’]
Claude Debussy Estampes [15’]
1. Pagodes
2. La soirée dans Grenade
3. Jardins sous la pluie
Toru Takemitsu Rain Tree Sketch [5’]
Maurice Ravel Miroirs (selection)
II. Oiseaux tristes [3’]
III. Une barque sur l’ocean [6’]
Toshio Hosokawa Haiku for Pierre Boulez [4’]
Claude Debussy L’isle joyeuse [5’]
Concert description
A direct flight from Paris to Tokyo takes about thirteen hours, the cities are almost 10,000 kilometers apart. Japanese and French piano music, especially in the 20th century, are much closer. Is this the result of the fashion for all things Oriental, prevailing at the end of the 19th century, which also influenced later works? Claude Debussy was fascinated by Far Eastern woodcuts, as was Maurice Ravel, whose home was decorated with Japanese prints, and whose bookcase contained a monograph on them. Olivier Messiaen directed his thoughts mainly to India, but the culture of the Land of the Cherry Blossom influenced him as well – after a visit to Japan, he wrote Sept haïkaï, and in his opera Saint François d’Assise, he annotated one of three ondes Martenot parts with the command to sound like the Japanese bush warbler (uguisu), a small bird singing to announce the coming of spring. Inspiration works the other way, too. Self-taught Toru Takemitsu considered Debussy and Messiaen to be his masters, although his first exposure to French music was a song called Parlez-moi d’amour (Talk to Me About Love) heard from an officer’s gramophone during the war. Toshio Hosokawa was educated in Tokyo and Germany, but he dedicated his haiku to Pierre Boulez, the influential French composer and conductor… At the end of the day, what unites the music of these artists in reception is their love of nature and their ability to transfer it into musical pastels – regardless of the style and sound language, as well as the function that nature plays in these very distant cultures.
– Dominika Micał (pisanezesluchu.pl)