Reviews
Reviews
Alto Riot January 2014
http://www.altoriot.com/best-of-2013-album-of-the-year/
Best of 2013: Album of the Year
Winner: Sarah Neufeld- Hero Brother - Hero Brother (Constellation Records / review)
Runner-up: Yukiko Kojima – Akira Miyoshi: Piano Works (Odradek / review)
Runner-up: Dobrinka Tabakova - String Paths (ECM Records)
Fitting that in choosing the album of the year it was narrowed down to the biggest surprises and least expected nominees. Against more established heavy hitters in the genre, both Dobrinka Tabakova’s String Paths and upstart pianist Yukiko Kojima’s interpretation Akira Miyoshi’s works were harmonic gems that took the critics by storm.
The genius crafting of Tabakova’s compositions area not just great contemporary works – they were INSTANT CLASSICS. Tabakova’s works are alluring to say the least and emotionally one of the most humbling records for even the most staunch listener. String Paths pieces together delicate, fragile movement that are beautiful at every turn. Tabakova is far above in a class of composers to herself and very rarely do audiences see a living legend develop as it happens. String Paths is Tabakova’s first super milestone vibrant with imagination and color that will set the bar incredibly high for all classical composers going forward.
Meanwhile, Kojima’s handling of Miyoshi with such delicateness and precision is pure art in motion. Its almost striking to realize how such softness and boldness could come out of such petite fingers. As the year progressed, our editorial staff began to realize how much Kojima’s album resonated upon additional listens – discovering new intricate details with every key. Kojima’s technique comes with a tightened control at an extremely high level of senses. If you were to choose the album of the year based upon difficulty and intelligence, nothing even comes close to being in the same league as Yukiko’s surprise hit. There’s a subtle pull that Kojima brings to Akira Miyoshi’s Piano Works and that firm grip is what in turns creates a sublimely gem of sonic craftsmanship. You’d be hard-press to find a reason not to instantly fall in love with Kojima’s performance and even harder-pressed to find another record this year treated with such devotion.
Both Tabakoba’s String Paths and Kojima’s Akira Miyoshi: Piano Works are deserving of the title album of the year.
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International Piano Magazine Guy Rickards December 2013
2013.12 Yukiko International Piano
Akira Miyoshi (born 1933) is one of Japan’s most venerable composers. He studied in mid-19505 Paris with Raymond Gallois-Montbrun {composer of ‘Japan’ Symphony) and Henri Challan, but the strongest influence on his work was Dutilleux, as the Piano Sonata (1957-1958) reveals. Its harmonic language. pulse and dimensions — the fast outer movements weightier than the central Andante — are modelled on the Frenchman‘s Piano Sonata of 1947. and the opening Allegro has the same easy flow as Dutilleux’s Allegro con moto.
Chaînes: préludes (1973) is a very different work, a set of 24 preludes grouped into three parts. Four source preludes are varied, transformed and metamorphosed into aphoristic miniatures — lasting under 28 minutes in entirety. While each prelude individually seems raw and unfinished, taken collectively they form a work of some grandeur. By contrast. the single-movement En vers (1980) is an impressive arched structure of power.
Forget the Debussyan resonances implied in Pour Ie piano’s title. A diptych, this is another chain of inter-related fragments. According to the composer, it evokes ‘memories of his experiences with the piano going back to childhood.’ Each part is cast in arch form restrained at the opening and close, more volatile within.
Kojima sounds wholly in tune with Miyoshi‘s soundscapes and Odradek‘s excellent recording catches all the subtle nuances of her playing. Let’s hope she goes on to give us more Miyoshi. Recommended for all collectors of post-War piano music.
BBC Music Magazine – Calum MacDonald –
2013.12 Yukiko Kojima Miyoshi – BBC Music Magazine
Akira Miyoshi: Piano works Yukiko Kojima (piano) (Odradek)
Yukiko Kojima‘s Miyoshi disc receives 5 STARS for performance and 5 STARS for recording quality in the BBC Music Magazine Christmas Edition!
“I really enjoyed this disc. Miyoshi’s is distinguished, inventive and continuously stimulating music, full of beauty and colour and with a marvellous sensitivity to the full range of keyboard sonority and resonance (and indeed, silence). Yukiko Kojima’s stunning virtuosity is clearly allied to a deep insight into the works themselves.”
Graham Rickson on the arts desk.com
http://www.theartsdesk.com/classical-music/classical-cds-weekly-akira-miyoshi-schubert-ashley-wass
Akira Miyoshi: Piano works Yukiko Kojima (piano) (Odradek)
Akira Miyoshi was born in Tokyo in 1933. Listen blind to the earliest piece on this disc and you’d think it could be an early work by the late Henri Dutilleux, and it’s no surprise to read that Miyoshi studied in Paris in the 1950s. Miyoshi’sPiano Sonata was completed in 1958, and it’s an arresting, attractive piece. It’s at its best when the piano writing is stripped bare, the harmonies reduced to their essence. Miyoshi’s faster writing can be dizzily exciting, but can feel as if it’s merely obeying our expectations of what a sonata should contain. Yet more interesting is Miyoshi’s 1973 Chaines, three linked pieces described by the composer as a set of 24 preludes – though not structured as you’d expect. Rhythmically freer, they’re punctuated by immaculately voiced bell sounds and oblique melodic gestures which can sound like probing questions. Hugh Collins Rice’s sleeve note highlights Miyoshi’s fascination with the physical act of breathing, and its impact on musical performance. And Chaines does feel very much alive – the occasional bursts of energy separated by music which shuffles, yawns and snoozes. In pianist Yukiko Kojima’s hands, every phrase speaks with calm authority, each sonorous chord immaculately balanced.
Written in 1980, En Vers starts softly and builds to a thunderous climax. The disc closes with the two movements of Pour le piano – Mouvement Circulaire et Croise, the second of which does arresting things with a repeated minor third. Music of rare potency and individuality; an hour spent with this disc will have you scurrying to YouTube in search of more Miyoshi. As usual, Odradek’s elegant presentation adds to the disc’s appeal.
Gramophone Magazine
Bartókian rhythmic drive in the finale and whirling two-handed patters that resemble what might have happened if Messiaen recomposed the last movement of Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata. Kojima plays this music with a commanding technique and a true sense of how its component parts cohere. In Chaînes, Kojima imparts sharply contrasting character to all of the disparate textures, from slow and amorphous sustained chords to rapid, spiky flourishes… Of the two most recent pieces, Mouvement Circulaire et croisé stands out for its short phrases demarcated by pauses, and the way the phrases grow increasingly elaborate and petulant yet never clutter the canvas. Again, Kojima’s feeling for nuance and intelligent voicings make a compelling case for a composer who deserves greater renown in the West.”
Gramophone – Jed Distler, Awards 2013
The Irish Times http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/yukiko-kojima-akira-miyoshi-piano-works-1.1502437
Akira Miyoshi (born 1933) is not just a contemporary of Japan’s best-known composer, Toru Takemitsu (1930-96) but, like Takemitsu, has an aesthetic orientation that leans towards France. Unlike Takemitsu, he actually studied there, under Raymond Gallois-Montbrun and Henri Dutilleux, and the titles of the piano works recorded here are all in French: Sonate pour piano (1958), Chaines – Préludes pour Piano (1973), En Vers(1980) and Pour le piano – Mouvement Circulaire et Croisé(1995-98). Miyoshi was a child prodigy on the piano, and his music ruminates and coruscates with natural ease and force in the sensitive hands of Yukiko Kojima, even though the bass end of the Steinway Model B used for the recordings does at times show signs of strain. url.ie/ijz5
Alto Riot
http://www.altoriot.com/reviews/yukiko-kojima-akira-miyoshi-piano-works/
A refreshing record vibrant in color and fragile beauty from Japanese pianist Yukiko Kojima interpreting the unique and fragile piano works of Akira Miyoshi.
Kojima expressively plays the often dramatic and tragic notes of Miyoshi in stunning fashion with such poise and depth that other pianists would crumble at such meticulous levels.
Nothing on the program is anything short of concentrated focus and while the repertoire may not instantly appeal to a general audience or even to casual classical listeners, there is a sense of bewilderment to be found. The lone fault on the program is a slight level of monotony that leaves much of Kojima’s capability to be desired. Yet even with that, the difficulty and cringing intensity of Kojima’s latest effort is a remarkable achievement and a daring risk worth taken.
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