Toshio HOSHIKAWA: Melodia II
(1977/79/2000); Melodia (1979).
Hikaru HAYASHI: A Bee Crosses Over
the Strait (1988).
Maki ISHII: Lost Sounds II,
Op.33b (1978/84) for accordion and tape.
Yuji TAKAHASHI: Like a
Water-Buffalo (1985) (poem & music).
Meiro SUGAWARA: Capriccio Pastorale
(1983); Ruscello (1980).
AYUO: Three pieces from 'Eurasian
Tango' (1998).
Mie Miki (accordion)
rec May 2000 Lanna Church, Sweden
BIS-CD-1144
[60.00]
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Toshio Hoshikawa (b 1955) wrote Melodia II as a student piece in the
'70s, and it has been transcribed for accordion by Mie Miki.
The much later Melodia (1979), inspired
by the Chinese sheng, avoids 'normal' accordion sound and contrasts
pure higher notes with the 'sinister' low register of the instrument. Hikaru
Hayashi's buzzing A Bee Crosses Over the Strait (1988) was suggested
by a surrealist poem. Maki Ishii's Lost Sounds II, Op.33b (1978/84)
for accordion and tape has an 'endless melody' repeated and extended by tape.
His Tango Prism Op 73 distorts a familiar tango, La Cumparsita.
Yuji Takahashi, an assistant of Takemitsu who worked with Xenakis,
composed Like a Water-Buffalo (1985) as 'heartfelt music' for Mie
Miki. Meiro Sugawara:is an eminent Scarlatti specialist. His
Capriccio Pastorale is based on a piece of the same name by Frescobaldi,
and the swift little Ruscello was conceived as an encore for his accordion
concerto. Ayuo's Eurasian Tango pieces (1998), which aim to
bring together Eastern music and tango, are transcriptions from piano pieces
(a great deal of piano music can be played on the accordion with little or
no adjustment needed) commissioned by Aki Takahashi - the tango has proved
a fruitful rhythmic resource, and new music based on tango was being collected
by Takahashi at the time, as well as by
Yvar Mikhashoff and
Alicia Terzian.
This is a recommendable CD for an instrument which in recent years has joined
the mainstream of contemporary music, is popular in Japan as well as especially
in the Baltic countries, and is attracting an increasing following elsewhere,
as was demonstrated in the recent Interpreters Competition in
Rotterdam.
An enjoyable programme in a variety of contemporary idioms, expertly played
and vividly recorded by BIS.
Peter Grahame Woolf
