"This CD, the third album of my piano works played by Satoko Inoue, presents all the pieces written for piano between 2015 and 2020, along with an introductory miniature piece from 2013.

A Contemplation (2013)

This tiny piece was a gift to my German friend composer Hauke Harder for his 50th birthday, whose work is characterized by contemplative calmness and the sonorities and temperament of just intonation. This piece consists of the repetition of a single chordal unit above the unchanging drone of C, each repetition is a minor third higher than the previous phrase so that the last repetition reaches an octave higher than the original. This entire process can be repeated as many times as the pianist wishes (in this recording, three times).

A Straw Hat Dance [version for piano] (2017/2020)

A Straw Hat Dance was originally written for harp solo towards the end of the summer (the season for the straw hat) of 2017. This piano version contains all the notes in the original version as they are, but with some additional articulation marks.

I have written several pieces with dance-like rhythmic character. This work, as the title implies, also shares that quality.

Caccia soave (2016)

Caccia soave is a piano version of Caccia for toy piano that I wrote in the same year. 'Caccia' is the Italian word for 'chase' or 'hunt' and is used traditionally as a musical term for a canon of folkloristic nature. My Caccia is, as the title implies, a two-voiced canon in unison, the first voice is imitated strictly by the second that lags behind, 'chasing' the leader. However, in this piece the canonic structure remains almost imperceptible to the listener's ear, because the two voices, sounding in the same register, intermingle with each other constantly, so that they become aurally inseparable. The intermingled voices create composite rhythmo-melodic patterns, different from the melodies in either voice. It is the kaleidoscopic succession of these ever-changing composite patterns (in other words, surface structures) that draws the listener's attention.

In Caccia soave, although all the notes in the original Caccia remain unchanged, they are transposed down, and re-phrased. Besides this, the tempo is made a little slower, and an 'echo' effect created by the reverberations from piano strings that are kept open (undamped) by the sostenuto-pedal is added. Through these adjustments, this piece may sound 'softer' than the original (hence, the adjective 'soave').

In Autumn [version for piano] (2014/2019)

In Autumn is also a piano version of a work originally written for a different medium, this time for koto and jushichigen (seventeen-stringed koto), in autumn of 2014.

Written in two voices, this piece is essentially nothing but a single, rhythmically flexible melodic line that runs from the beginning to the end. Each note constituting the line is accompanied by a 'shadow' tone (the second voice), generally in rhythmic unison with the main note (the first voice) but lagging behind slightly toward the end of the piece. This line with its shadow is interrupted here and there by one or two dyads played very softly, as if the background layer ('shadow') of the music is being exposed to the ears by the silence that shatters the continuity of the main line ('surface layer'). This double contrast-the combination of the contrasts between main and shadow tones on the one hand and the surface and shadow layers on the other - reveals great complexities concealed within the apparently artless single melodic line.

The listener may take it that the higher voice presents the 'main' notes and lower voice their shadows, or vice versa. Similarly, the louder parts may be heard as the 'surface layer' and the softer parts as the 'shadow layer', or vice versa. Things that stand out are sometimes nothing but shadows of the things behind them.

Interlude (2017)

The title 'interlude' suggests that the music I write (indeed any of my compositions), even if sounding as an autonomous, self-sufficient, independent entity, stands in-between two eternities, the past and the future: the things that have gone, and the things that will come.

Pomegranate (2020)

The form of this work is based on the responsorial plain chant, in which a cantor sings first and then the chorus responds. That is to say, a single melody is played, and then the melody is repeated along with other notes (in other words, with added thickness of sound). This repetition occurs twice (unlike in the case of responsorial chant), and the second repetition is with an even denser texture than the first. However, we cannot necessarily recognize that they are repetitions of the same melody because the original melodic line is buried in the chordal textures (i.e., the chord-colorings to each individual note that constitutes the original melody) which grow thicker with each repetition. Thus, the second repetition may be heard as a transformation of the melody into thicker sound aggregates.

In any case, after a melody is repeated a total of three times in this way, it is followed by a new melody. The entire form of the piece is based on the repetition of this process of three repetitions of each melody.

There is no particular reason why I named this piece 'pomegranate'. When I finished writing the piece, the name simply came up into my mind - that is the sole reason. Some time after I sent the completed score to Satoko Inoue, whom the piece was written for, I happened to learn that pomegranate is one of her favorite foods.

That said, you may imagine that there might have been some unconscious connection. But, of course, it's only a delusion.

Three Winter Months (2019)

Since the early 1970's, I have been composing music based on a single melodic line. Three Winter Months is not an exception, although it may not sound so to the listener's ears, due to the nature of the melodic line that spreads out over a very wide range. The continuity of the melodic line is made ambiguous intentionally in this piece. After the first 'phrase' of the melodic line is sung, the first and second halves of the phrase are played again but somehow combined simultaneously (in other words, the phrase is 'folded'). Then, the second phase is treated in the same way, followed by the third, and so on. In the 'folded' section of each 'phrase' repetition, the continuity of the melodic line becomes even more vague. What I am interested in when writing the piece is the threshold of perception, at what point scattered notes become a line (or melody), and at what point a melody transforms into 'sound texture' without melodic legitimacy in our aural perception. It took me three winter months to write the piece.

Helleborus, for piano four hands (2015)

My composition is a kind of improvisation. I start writing without any plan about the piece. I simply wait until the first note (or chord) visits me. Upon having it, I try to listen out to find what the next following note that the first one suggests, then the second note to the third, and so on. It is an improvisation not directly on the instrument but on paper, a very slow, time-consuming process of writing, conducted by contemplation on the sound that came to me. Helleborus is my winter contemplation. When the work had grown up to its final shape, the hellebore flowers in my yard were shivering quietly with the cold breeze of early spring."-Jo Kondo

Satoko Inoue

is a renowned leading interpreter of contemporary solo piano music. She finished the master's course of composition at the Tokyo Gakugei University. Since 1991, after her career as the member of "Musica Practica Ensemble", she has been engaged in solo activities. Her repertoires mainly include the works of Jo Kondo, Morton Feldman, John Cage and Luc Ferrari as well as those of other Japanese composers. Her activities have been worldwide, as she has played at international contemporary music festivals; given solo recitals in Europe, North and South America, and the Middle East; and made lectures for master classes of universities.

She was Professor at the Kunitachi College of Music in Tokyo until March 2023.