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【Sold out】Subscription Concert No.975 A Series

This concert is over. Date: Fri. 12. May 2023 19:00 (18:00)

Venue: Tokyo Bunka Kaikan Venue Info Seat

[Akira Miyoshi 90 | Anti-War Trilogy]

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Artists

Kazuki YAMADA, Conductor
The Philharmonic Chorus of Tokyo, Chorus *
Musashino Academia Musicae Chorus, Chorus *
The Little Singers of Tokyo, Children’s Chorus **

Profile

Kazuki YAMADA (Conductor)

Kazuki Yamada is Artistic Director and Music Director of Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo, Principal Guest Conductor of City of Birmingham Symphony, Permanent Conductor of Japan Philharmonic, Principal Guest Conductor of Yomiuri Nippon Symphony, Music Director and President of The Philharmonic Chorus of Tokyo, and Music Director of Yokohama Sinfonietta. He was formerly Principal Guest Conductor of Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (2010-17). Yamada appears regularly with orchestras including Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, Orchestre de Paris, Philharmonia Orchestra, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Czech Philharmonic, and Gothenburg Symphony.

The Philharmonic Chorus of Tokyo (Chorus)

The Philharmonic Chorus of Tokyo is a leading professional choir of Japan. Since its founding in 1956, the number of regular concerts held every year reached 255 this year. Its repertoire covers wide range from Renaissance to contemporary works and the number of commissioned and premiered works so far is more than 250.
Other activities include co-performances with orchestras, operas, educational programs for schools’ students and various concerts requested by local concert halls.
PCT is also very active in performing abroad. The countries PCT visited so far include USA (1987), Sweden and Belgium (1997), Finland and Estonia (2000), Canada (2006) and France and Monaco (2019) etc.
Awards:The Japan Arts Festival Grand Prize (Ministry of Culture), Suntory Music Prize, Nakajima Kenzo Music Prize, Mainichi Arts Prize and Kyoto Music Prize etc.

Musashino Academia Musicae Chorus (Chorus)

Musashino Academia Musicae Chorus has been organized by a vocal music course of the college as one of the chorus classes. The chorus has performed large choral works at regular concerts with Musashino Academia Musicae Orchestra. Musashino Academia Musicae Chorus has performed with orchestras including Yomiuri Nippon Symphony, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, Japan Philharmonic, and Tokyo Symphony under batons of Rozhdestvensky, Masur, Maazel, Sinopoli, Inbal, Ashkenazy and K. Yamada.

The Little Singers of Tokyo (Children’s Chorus)

The Little Singers of Tokyo (LSOT) formed in 1951 with the concept “for Japanese children to sing Renaissance works”. The founding spirit continues today with a repertoire focusing on authentic choral works based on traditional European music. LSOT covers a wide range of music from Gregorian Chants to contemporary works. In addition to the regular concerts held twice a year, LSOT has made 33 overseas concert tours. They have also appeared with many orchestras and opera theaters at home and abroad, and have performed with maestros such as Abbado, Luisi, and Muti.

Program

Miyoshi: Requiem for Mixed Chorus and Orchestra（1972）*

Program Notes
Miyoshi: Psaume for Mixed Chorus and Orchestra（1979）*

Program Notes
Miyoshi: Kyô-mon for Children’s Chorus and Orchestra（1984）**

Program Notes

Akira Miyoshi: Anti-War Trilogy
Mariko Okayama
（translated by Tadashi Mikajiri）

Akira Miyoshi (1933-2013)ʼs trilogy is based on his own experience during the war. He completed Requiem, the first of the trilogy, in 1972. Let me follow his earlier steps leading to the work.
The idea was conceived early. In 1957, when he returned to Japan after studying in Paris, Haneda International Airport of Tokyo seemed totally black to him, like ink-wash paintings. He imagined: “There are still white bones scattered here and there. I will gather them, and make a grave myself, engrave an epitaph and become the caretaker of the grave” (from Between the wavecrests – Dialogue over the invisible by Akira Miyoshi and Mariko Okayama, 2006, Shunjusha). However, Miyoshi, who was just back from Paris, was surrounded by compliments on his refined talent, and his silent desire was “firmly sealed” in his mind.

Totsugu Musume ni (To my daughter leaving for marriage)

It was in Totsugu Musume ni (To my daughter leaving for marriage), a choral suite composed five years later (1962, text by Toshiko Takada) that he first touched on the subject. The third piece Tatakaino Hibi (Days of the War) in the suite, has a passage: “Stop, please! - Mothers and their children kept crying in towns and villages all over the world, raising their hands to the sky which smelled of scorching”. For the premiere of the suite, Miyoshi did not write anything more than just referring to Toshiko Takada, who had a daughter leaving for marriage, and to himself whose sister had married shortly before. However, in 1974, he wrote “We share the war experience, and it gives dramatic depths to the sentiments of this piece. I hope this work to be sung for generations in the reality of life, whether in happiness or in unhappiness”. (From the distance to nothingness by Akira Miyoshi, 1979, Hakusuisha).
In addition, when Totsugu Musume ni was revived, Miyoshi wrote: “There is a story I put down for the first time”, and told his memory of his sister, who was one year younger, and with whom he was brought up together in a pair. Just before composing this work, Miyoshi (29 years old then) had a desire for suicide, and traveled to Karuizawa. Without knowing his whereabouts, his sister sensed where he was staying at, appeared there, and suggested to him to go to a hot spring together. Coming back to Tokyo, he started working on Totsugu Musume ni. “In the fifth piece, after repeating ‘Good byeʼ, a melody came up to my mind for the words ‘her smileʼ to be sung by men, and I could not hold my tears.” When he was over 70 years old, this confession of his was concluded with another note: “My sister passed away a few years ago”.
In the same year, he told about her on another occasion. While he evacuated from bombarded Tokyo to rural Nagano, he was hungry and “stole an apple but hid it from his sister and did not share it with her”. (Music Today, September 2004) The sister, whom he did not share the stolen apple, saved him from death. His remorse, his “wound” (Miyoshi used this word) and his love started afflicting him long before his narratives in the song: “My friend was killed by machine-guns while playing in the river. It was not me who was killed.” which appeared after his Requiem.

Ohson fuki (People did not come back) and Odeko no koitsu (This thing on my forehead)

The next sprout of the idea was Ohson fuki(People did not come back) (1970, text by Tatsuji Miyoshi) for menʼs choir. The image of a person who did not come back, reminded Miyoshi of a mother on the quay, waiting for her son who was detained in Siberia by the Soviet Union. (The press frequently took up such mothers.) He quietly started ringing the hand-bells for his pilgrimage of the trilogy which was to last twelve years from Requiem (1972) to Kyô-mon (1984).
The subjects of the following work, Odeko no koitsu (This thing on my forehead) (1971, text by Taizo Horai), a choral suite for children, are starving children in war-afflicted Biafra (mid-west Africa). Already in this work, the figure of Requiem is clearly visible. “Why − It was I who killed them. I did it!” − this cry in Odeko no koitsu gushes into Juro Miyoshiʼs groan “But, I am killing.” (Requiem, Chapter I)

Requiem

In the background ofRequiem lies the darkness that was overcasting the world, such as Vietnam War, which lasted over 10 years from mid-1960s, and the African famine of 1970s. Memory of the War revives. I, who was a child then; the ink-wash world I saw at Haneda… He vomited all that had been firmly sealed in him like clogged blood. After 27 years (from the end of World War II in 1945 to Requiem in 1972), he started expressly asking “Why?” – questions of unreasonable deaths. The gravestone he placed rent the skies with choral agony and shouts, alongside the beatings of strings, brass, winds and percussion.
When the literary critic Kenzo Nakajima (1903-79) heard the premiere on March 15, 1972, he was shocked by the extreme change in the composerʼs sound, and wrote “Itʼs different, so different, different from Miyoshi I have known”, because the world of Miyoshiʼs sound had always possessed serene beauty, and had never violated the ears even at the climax. However, Nakajima nodded before long, understanding that “This was the real Miyoshi, and it was this that has been concealed deep underneath”, and then he “silently started singing to the music.” (Arts Quartery, 1972 summer edition.).
Nakajima, who lived through pre-war, war itself and post-war periods, was able to understand Miyoshi and was able to sing together, but he was not to live till the next work Psaume（Psalm） (1979), and Miyoshi dedicated his book From the distance to nothingness which he published in the same year to Nakajimaʼs tomb. The generation born after the war criticized the work: “We cannot hear the words”, and Miyoshi replied: “You should be able to understand it even if you donʼt hear the words.” In a sense, it is natural for us, who do not know machine-gun firing, nor incendiary bombs, evacuation in the country side or the starving there, to be unable to swallow up the chaos as it is presented.

Psaume (Psalm)

The last verse of the Requiem, “The life, the mortal, is dying in the dusk” (Responsory in the Dusk by Sakon Soh (1919-2006)), then leads in turn to Psaume (Psalm)seven years later in 1979, with texts from Sohʼs collection of poems Jomon (1978, Shichosha). The friendship with Soh lasted more than 30 years and brought out Rainbow and Apples for female choir and piano in 2003 (apples remind us of Miyoshiʼs sister). Soh became Miyoshiʼs indispensable accompanists of life.
In the night of the Bombing of Tokyo in 1945, while Soh was running around to escape from the savage fires, he let off his motherʼs hand, who died right in front of himself. His words thus rubs against Miyoshiʼs wounds, and the resulting sound is fierce. Miyoshi, who heard the voices of the dead in Requiem, calls out now to the living as the one who survived the war in Psaume , but his voice is his pain gushing out − the pain which was piercing the one who was made to survive. Momentarily, however, there appears a gentle flow of the strings, followed by “Hana Ichi-monme (A flower − a girl worth five grams of silver)” (a childrenʼs rhyme, where two rows of kids call to each other). The wave then leads to “Rocking and being rocked together” − the contrast between the living and the dead. The refrain in the final chapter “Ichi-monme (five grams)” transforms into the light, and vapors into the atmosphere.

Kyô-mon (Ripples of sound)

The echoing phrase “Five grams of moon, in search of Sho” at the end of Psaume directly flows into the sound of Kyô-mon (Ripples of sound) (1984). The quiet singing of “Kagome, kagome (“Those who are caught in the cage”, a childrenʼs rhyme)” is crushed by a striking noise. When the previous work reciprocated between the earth and the world of the dead, it was natural that the following work starts with “Kagome, kagome”, a song-play where children form a circle — a linkage, to link this world to the other. We hear Miyoshiʼs prayer. He wrote: “I want children to live on, at least the children who play in a circle, guessing who is sitting right behind you. Canʼt I somehow capture the ears in the circle? − the ears listening to the questioning song? Canʼt the living and the dead step into the circle hand-in-hand?” After asking: “In the evening after the dawn, what does the bone in the wind look at?”, the voice returns to the original rhyme: “Who is sitting right behind you?” It then quietly melts into darkness.
Why did Miyoshi use childrenʼs rhymes for Psaume and Kyô-mon? He said they represent what his motherʼs hometown, Narai (now a district in Shiojiri, Nagano) was like. His ears remembered the refrains of the song in the villageʼs summer dance, calling out to the mountain “Kiso-no nah”. “They resonate with childrenʼs rhymes, of the children coming home to their mothers” (Between the wavecrests).

The day − August 6

Miyoshi revealed later in his life, that he conceived the idea of climbing the ascent of the trilogy when he wrote Requiem.
However, his pilgrimage did not end there. The next journey starts from Dispersion de L'Ete (Dispersion in the summer) (1995) based on day of the atomic bomb, to the tetralogy of symphonic pieces in four consecutive years − Dispersion de L'Ete, Etoile a Echos (Echoing Star), Fruits de Brume (Fruit of the mist) and Chanson Terminale - Effeuillage des Vagues (End song – Picking of the waves) − and then continues till his last years of creation, during which he composed The day − August 6 for mixed choir and piano (2007, text by Shuntaro Tanigawa). It was closed by the serene chorale of “My only choice is to believe that joy can sprout even in the soils of wrath, pain and sorrow.”
Miyoshi said with a smile: “I asked myself: ‘Will all the living people come to the epitaph of Requiem?ʼ Their response was: ‘Who cares!ʼ ” This was as late as 2005. It makes you feel how long and gravely his feelings stayed with him, and what he felt after recognizing how little they were understood. “When will Miyoshi stop circling around the epitaph?” We continued to hear such criticism even till his last work The day − August 6. Around the time of the Requiem, the works depicting the wartime were limited to Hikaru Hayashi (1931-2012) ʼs The Finished Scenes From Hiroshima (1971-2001, text by Tamiki Hara) and Ikuma Dan (1924-2001)ʼs Hikarigoke (Luminous Moss) (1972, words arranged from a novel by Taijun Takeda). Wartime works are rare in the following decades, too.
By the way, this trilogy was also a part of the journey of From distance to nothingness. He described it as a return from “Ko” − meaning “arc” − to “Mu” − meaning “nothingness”, but I would rather say it was a passage from another “Ko” − isolation, individual or ego, representing Western Europe − to “Mu” − nothingness, representing Japan. What Miyoshi resounds in his opera Tōi-Ho (Voile Lointaine) (1999, libretto by Mutsuro Takahashi) is a numbering song “Hitotsu toya (count one)” and “Anmenzensu Santa Maria (Amen, Deus, Santa Maria)”. Miyoshi pursued the halos shining out of these songs.

Why did Miyoshi, after his sisterʼs death, choose to confess his story of hiding the apple from her? That was because, I believe, he knew that at the bottom of his misdeed lies the ultimate choice of life or death, in other words, how a human being behaves to others in an extreme situation. The pandemic that struck the world has shattered the vain conceit of human race as the respectable ruler of this earth, and has revealed that anyone would hide apples and fight over them on this unholy earth torn by segregation and intolerance. The vast amount of blood shed, not only in Ukraine invaded by Russia, but also elsewhere in the world, is the testament to the limitless greed of mankind. By confessing he was no exception, Miyoshi reveals such evils lurk anywhere around us, but he also encourages us to walk ahead with your eyes looking up to the light above. As a humane being of reason, you should consider the people around you, and strive to do anything good, however small, for them.

｜Miyoshi: Requiem for Mixed Chorus and Orchestra (1972)

The text contains excerpts from Anthology of Japanese Anti-War Poetry (1969, Taihei Shuppansha) (#1-5, 7-9; Numbers are those put on the song text), and from Wills of the members of Kamikaze Special Attack Unit (1971, Bestsellers) (#6), and Antiwar Responsories by Sakon Soh (#10). The work consists of three chapters, and is played through without a break. It starts with “Who wants to hide like rats in gutters?”, and the words were tossed around by the yelling orchestra, raising fragmentary flames.
“Various colors mix together, and it can only be seen as one color. Neither the title nor the text will explain it. − Therefore, please forget the title and words, so that the colors can resume their hues in your mind on their own.” (Miyoshiʼs own words from the program note for the premiere.)
Even if the words are indiscernible, it is fine so far as the resonance, touch and texture are felt by the audience. “Please eat this” (Chapter III, #8) is something you should be able to hear by the words themselves, but “I planted it in that soil” (in the same song) is something which the listener should find its place by imagination. Miyoshi had a clear distinction between these phrases. The fierceness of this Chapter III is so overwhelming, that you may want to close your ears. Even the Responsory in the dusk at the end expires in the reverberation of it.
Chapter II, #6 comes from the wills of five Kamikaze members. When they call out “Father, Mother, Toki, Kei, sister Fusa”, the names, the faces, and the figures are individual beings that cannot be replaced by others. It is a prelude to “Hana Ichi-monme” of the next work Psaume , where the voice calls to individual names, starting from “Kei-chan”.
Deaths in war are not accumulations of faceless dying people. Each one of them had his own family, his own love, and his own life. It was the violation and elimination of such individuality that are expressed in the fierce resonance of the Chapter.

Composed: 1971-72
Premiere: March 15, 1972, at Tokyo Bunka Kaikan
NHK Symphony Orchestra, Japan Chorus Union
Conductor: Hiroyuki Iwaki
　

｜Miyoshi: Psaume for Mixed Chorus and Orchestra (1979)

Ⅰ At the beginning of the beginning − Clouds
Ⅱ Beginning without beginning − Celestial bodies
Ⅲ Beginning with beginning − Twilight at sunset
Ⅳ Beginning without end − Human figure
Ⅴ Middle of middle − Dance in the waterfall basin
Ⅵ End with beginning − Red sky at sunset
Ⅶ Of the beginning and the end − Clouds in the mirror
Ⅷ End without end − Graves of waves
(Ⅶ Of the beginning and the end − Clouds in the mirror)

Psaume (Psalm) consists of eight chapters above. （At the end of the work, Chapter VII is repeated as the refrain, while getting transformed as it progresses.）The texts were adopted from Sakon Sohʼs collection of poems Jomon, and arranged by the composer.
At the beginning, with the words “If you had not been killed, my clouds, there would not have been such civilization as Jomon”, an ominous utterance bursts out with the orchestra. At times it becomes a shout or a narration without pitch. The words are frequently chopped down by the percussion. When the strings play melodies in Chapter III, the words of the chorus: “waves of flower petals” bring a momentary calm, but you will then be shattered to pieces by the fierce sound-world, from the time of the percussionʼs invasion till the words: “You died, we lived” in Chapter V: Dance in the waterfall basin.
Miyoshi calls “Hana Ichi-monme (A flower − a girl worth 5 grams of silver)” in Chapter VII a ritual drawing to choose whom to sacrifice, because this rhyme originates from child trafficking. The music does not loosen the conflict until serene harmony shines in at Chapter VIII. With the long-lasting crescendo, the words are repeated in contrast: “Rocking and being rocked together”, “Crushing and being crushed together”, “Melting and being melted together”, “Illuminating and being illuminated together”. From there emerges the original tune of “Hana Ichi-monme” quietly. It points out at the song “Kagome, kagome” in the third of the trilogy Kyô-mon.
In the notes of the collection Jomon, Soh wrote “I donʼt want to call them the dead. Because they were killed, they have come to be living beings in me. And I am one of those who killed them. How can I be allowed to pray their spirits to rest?” Soh and Miyoshi have this as a common starting point.
Let me add. In Chapter IV of Sohʼs collection, there is a poem Sacrifice which Miyoshi did not set to music. It ends: “A brother and his younger sister are pinched at both ends of a rope; the boy beneath the water, and the girl at the peak of the mountain.”

Composed: 1978-79
Premiere: October 16, 1979 at Tokyo Bunka Kaikan
Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Japan Chorus Union
Conductor: Kenʼichiro Kobayashi
　

｜Miyoshi: Kyô-mon for Childrenʼs Chorus and Orchestra (1984)

In early summer of 1982, Akira Miyoshi told Sakon Soh in a car “What come into my ear nowadays are only childrenʼs rhymes like ‘Kagome, kagomeʼ ”. Soh introduced him later to another Kagome − Oni Asobi song (a song play in a circle, to guess who is right behind you) from Bunsei period (1818-30). Miyoshi then finds the voice of Kyô-mon (Ripples of sound) in the song “Tsuppe-eru Kagome (Kagome falling into the mud)”. Kyô-mon is shorter than the two previous works in the trilogy, and the general tone was that which exchanges between childrenʼs voices and orchestra.
At the beginning, when you are attentively listening to childrenʼs chorus, the orchestra sharply charges in, but there is no violent threat. Childrenʼs voices gradually form layers and then ripples, finally waves to splash out. The swinging movement we heard in “Rocking and being rocked together” in Psaume repeats here in the singing, forms a loose ring, and then rises upwards in helical circles. Although it is interrupted again and again by the striking noises, the singing voice of “Kagome, kagome”, stands up again and again from the bottom of silence.
“Bones in the wind”, “Bones in the wave”, “Bones in the cloud”, “Bones in the rainbow”. Miyoshi and Soh keep gathering the bones scattered in the ink-wash world, keep praying, and then look up to the light − the fragment of the beautiful moon that showers on them from the back “right behind them”.

Composed: 1982-84
Premiere: June 23, 1984 at Tokyo Bunka Kaikan
Tokyo Philharmoic Orchestra
Tokyo Broadcasting Childrenʼs Chorus Group
Conductor: Tadaaki Otaka

Akira Miyoshi（1933-2013）
Born in Tokyo, Miyoshi joined “Childrenʼs Piano Group” of Jiyu Gakuen, when he was 3 years old. At the age of 4, he started learning composition and violin with Kozaburo Hirai. In 1951, he entered University of Tokyo, where he majored in French literature. While at this school, he won the 1st prize of composition with his Sonata in the Music Competition of Japan, and his Sinfonia Concertante for Piano and Orchestra was awarded Otaka Prize by NHK Symphony Orchestra. Miyoshi moved to Conservatoire de Paris in 1955 and studied with Henri Challan and Raymond Gallois-Montbrun. He was also under the influence of Henri Dutilleux while in Paris. He came back to University of Tokyo in 1957 and graduated in 1960. From then on, he published large scale works almost every year, and left memorable ones in various genres, such as orchestral works, chamber works, songs, and choral works.
Anti-War Trilogy − Requiem, Psaume (Psalm) and Kyô-mon (Ripples of sound) − represents his middle age creations. Since 1995, he wrote the tetralogy of symphonic pieces in four consecutive years − Dispersion de L'Ete (Dispersion in the summer), Etoile a Echos (Echoing Star), Fruits de Brume (Fruit of the mist) and Chanson Terminale - Effeuillage des Vagues (End song - Picking of the waves). He also worked on other compositions such as the theme song for the animated drama Anne of Green Gables (1979). From 1997 to 1999 he worked on the opera Tōi-Ho (Voile Lointaine). Miyoshi served as the President of Toho Gakuen School of Music (1974-95), and then the President of Tokyo Bunka Kaikan (1996-2004). He was chosen as a member of the Japan Art Academy, and was awarded the title of Person of Cultural Merit by Japanese government, both of which are prestigious titles given to outstanding artists.

　

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