Shakuhachi or Harpsichord
Shakuhachi or harpsichord, which instrument is closer to me? The harpsichord is an instrument of baroque music and I met it in Europe first time. And shakuhachi? It comes from my home country. But I can’t remember ever hearing shakuhachi in my youth. Therefore, it is hardly surprising to compose a duo for it! However, when the shakuhachi player and harpsichordist performed a small joint improvisation for me, my worries were blown away – what a conglomerate of sounds!
Harpsichordist Daniel Trumbull and concert designer Ilka Seifert excavated a rare tale by Yasunori Kawabara. In the short story “Sleeping Beauty”, the Japanese Nobel Prize winner for literature addressed the issue of certain problems of ageing men.
“Eguchi, a man in his late 60s, visits an oceanside house several times to spend the night with sleeping girls. What the encounters with the sleeping beauties trigger in the old man, what memories and what nearness to death they evoke, makes up the irritating magic of this narrative. Morally alienating as a construction and at the same time rooted in old Japanese traditions, this novel is.” (End quote)
It is not about this man, Eguchi, but for him that I have written music. He will sink into memories or wander off into thoughts – listening to my music.
