Japanese pianist Maiko Mori’s new album of modern Etudes for piano blends elements of classical, jazz, rock, and techno idioms. A study in diversity, Mori’s album preserves the foundations of traditional classical music, whilst weaving in musical elements from different backgrounds, styles and regions.
Chasm
Nikolai Kapustin (1937-2020)
Eight Concert Etudes, Op.40
1. No.1 Prelude
2. No.2 Reverie
3. No.3 Toccatina
4. No.4 Remembrance
5. No.5 Raillery
6. No.6 Pastorale
7. No.7 Intermezzo
8. No.8 Finale
Melanie Spanswick (b.1969)
Two Etudes from ‘Simply Driven’ (2019)
9. Chasm*
Dedicated to Maiko Mori
10. Frenzy*
Karen Tanaka (b.1961)
Techno Etudes
11. I
12. II
13. III
Masashi Hamauzu (b.1971)
Etudes, Op.4
14. No.1 in C Major “Die Glocke”
15. No.2 in D Major
16. No.3 in F-sharp Major
17. No.4 in C Major
18. No.5 in C Major
19. No.6 in D minor “Blank”
20. No.7 in B-flat Major
21. No.8 in G minor
22. No.9 in C minor “Donnergrollen”
23. No.10 in B-flat Major
24. No.11 in E-flat Major
25. No.12 in D-flat Major
Maiko Mori, piano
*World Premiere Recording
Classical music can seem to exist separately from the rest of musical life, but in reality its edges have always touched other styles and genres, as the music chosen and performed by Maiko Mori makes clear. Her programme forms something of a musical memoir, touched by jazz, the music of computer games and other styles still, but rooted ultimately in the classical tradition.
Music travels like little else, and early-twentieth century American jazz found an unlikely audience in the USSR, where it dazzled and delighted composer Nikolai Kapustin. His own music was possessed by its spirit, though he never set out to simply emulate it. Instead, his music became a fusion of the jazz idiom and the forms and performance practices of classical music – syncopated and scrunchy, yes, but notated precisely for concert pianists. It’s as if a parallel classical tradition, descended from Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, had branched off and lived healthily on the other side of the Iron Curtain. His Eight Concert Etudes, composed in 1984, deploy energetic syncopation and freewheeling melody in a manner redolent of the great jazz pianists of the mid-twentieth century, but Kapustin’s classical influences are never far away. The opening pages of the second of the etudes, ‘Dream’, could almost be a prelude or Etude-Tableaux by Rachmaninov; Prokofiev’s wartime piano music springs to mind in the fifth. When Western classical pianists discovered Kapustin’s music in the late 1990s, these eight pieces were among the first to reach a wider audience.
In contrast to Kapustin’s signature style, the music of pianist, composer and educator Melanie Spanswick blends classical language and elegance with minimalist textures. ‘Chasm’, written for Maiko Mori, is one of five studies for advanced pianists published by Schott Music in 2020 as a collection called Simply Driven. At its centre is a grim, slow abyss, framed at beginning and end by a burble of fluttering notes. ‘Frenzy’, another piece from the same collection, is a brief musical sketch in almost-perpetual motion; Spanswick calls it a “study for nimble fingers”.
The insistent beat of mid-80s club music inspires Tokyo-born composer Karen Tanaka’s Techno Etudes, three pieces which translate to the piano a style which emerged simultaneously in West Germany and Detroit, USA. To the high-tempo throb of the techno beat, revellers lose themselves in a river of electronic sound, orchestrated by the figure of a DJ; in these Techno Etudes, Tanaka turns the keyboard into a driving, mechanistic dance floor, playing her pianist like a DJ’s decks. This recording has been produced specifically with a drier, closer sound than the other items on the album, as requested by the composer.
Masashi Hamauzu’s Twelve Etudes begin with a different kind of propulsive motion, imitating the sound of furiously ringing bells. Hamauzu, who was born in Germany in 1971, moved with his family to Osaka in Japan in later childhood and went on to study music at Tokyo University of the Arts. After graduating, he left behind aspirations to perform classical music and instead applied to work for video game publisher Square. There he composed music for many game titles, including the hugely popular Final Fantasy series.
His musical style, which draws inspiration from Japanese composers such as Ryuichi Sakamoto, is also unmistakably influenced by Debussy and Ravel, though Hamauzu himself downplays the connection. These etudes present genial and witty music – sunny even – but there are dark clouds too. Hamauzu demonstrates his command of a simple idea in the sixth etude, subtitled ‘Blank’ (one of three to carry a name) spinning a tender love song from a slow, metronomic rhythm. Like so much of the music on this album, these are often studies of motion – no. 9 (named ‘Donnergrollen’, a German term for a peel of thunder) whirls like a spinning top. The fourth and tenth might depict the motion of a walk, breaking now and then into a skip or even a run. In the end, for all the moods and images conjured in this cycle, the sense is of a circle closed, with a final piece returning to the bright ringing of the opening.
Andrew Morris
Japanese pianist Maiko Mori’s new album of modern Etudes for piano blends elements of classical, jazz, rock, and techno idioms. A study in diversity, Mori’s album preserves the foundations of traditional classical music, whilst weaving in musical elements from different backgrounds, styles and regions.
The new album features music by four prominent contemporary composers with cross-over elements: Nikolai Kapustin’s Eight Concert Etudes fuses classical piano tradition with jazz idioms; Japan’s well-known gaming composer (best known for his work on Final Fantasy X), Masashi Hamauzu’s rare classical work Etudes Op.4 combines impressionistic ideas with rhythmic and sometimes melancholic gaming music elements; Melanie Spanswick’s etude, Chasm, written for Maiko Mori in 2019 reflects minimalist influences with a variety of fragments from different musical languages.
Finally, prominent Japanese composer Karen Tanaka’s Techno Etudes takes us to a dazzling, addictive world of techno, speed and rhythm.
Maiko Mori
Piano
Pianist Maiko Mori is a soloist and chamber musician held in high regard around the world. She grew up in Japan, and though born into a non-musical, began playing the piano at a very early age, developing a fascination with the instrument and the way it could be used in classical music, jazz, and beyond.
Her studies brought her to the UK in 2000, at the age of 18, and first prize at the Birmingham International Piano Competition followed two years later. Then, in 2006, her UK concerto debut proved very memorable. “It was one of the most important experiences of my life”, says Maiko of the performance of Prokofiev’s 3rd Piano Concerto at London’s Royal College of Music, with conductor Vassily Petrenko. “When I heard the clarinet solo that starts the piece, I forgot all my nerves, and I had a wonderful sense of calm through the rest of the performance.” Since then, she has performed concertos by Grieg, Brahms, Rachmaninov and Chopin.
As well as performing at halls and festivals the world over, Maiko teaches the piano at the University of Chichester, and aims to help her students develop their own approach to learning repertoire. “I hope they find the enjoyment of practice”, she says. “I want them to be confident asking their own questions about the music, and use them to find meaning, rather than having me simply tell them how to go about it.”
Maiko’s own musical education was firmly rooted in the classical tradition, but an interest in gaming expanded her understanding of what composers could do. “In role playing games, you take on a character”, she explains, “and you become connected with music in a new way.” Her admiration for the composers who helped create these experiences has stayed with her, informing her choices for her album, Chasm. Maiko plans now to explore the concert work of video game composers further, alongside performances and recordings of more conventional nineteenth and twentieth century repertoire. As she points out, “my feet remain firmly planted in classical music!”
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