As one of the concerts of The Agency for Cultural Affair's the International Performing Arts Festival (IPAF), "Berio in Kyoto" is going to be held on October 23 and 24 at 3 temples in Kyoto. It is the first complete performance of Luciano Berio's Sequenzas in Kansai area in Japan.

By Sakae Arita / musicologist
 The Italian contemporary composer, Luciano Berio, has regrettably passed away last year. The sorely missed composer spent the last forty plus years of his life composing a series of solo pieces for various musical instruments, which he titled them as Sequenzas. Berio was inspired to write Sequenzas due to his association with great musicians, who were all musicians representative of the twentieth century. In these works, he showed his deep affection, a characteristic of the music-loving Italians, for the great composers including Bach, Paganini and Debussy as well as their masterpieces that added a highlight to the history of each musical instrument. At the same time, he sought in this challenging work the potential of the "new sound" by freeing himself from traditions of performance styles.

 Often referred to as a forefront of avant-garde, Berio, however, also respected the tradition of music and believed that his mission as a composer was to help the tradition evolve further through creative challenges. These Sequenzas are dubbed as a catalogue of modern performance styles, showcases dazzling successions of transcendental techniques. Many new techniques were experimented in these works for the first time. Musicians open the doors to new sounds one by one, leading the audience to a journey to the world of new sounds. Sequenzas are a paean to the limitless dreams and imagination of human beings in their endless challenges of exploration.

 Berio encountered the ancient Japanese sounds in old Kyoto. He was deeply intrigued by the acoustic scenery that he sensed in the ordinary life of Japanese people. Perhaps, he recognized that Japanese musical instruments are not mere instruments, but that each of them could be alive and possesses a universe of its own? Since the ancient time, Sho was considered to represent the celestial light and Hichiriki as the voices of the earth and human. Yokobue was then believed to connect and bring the two worlds together. The three themes of this evening's concert -"Ten to Hito to (The Vault of Heaven and the Human Beings)", "Hito to Chi to (The Human Beings and the Earth)", "Chi to Ku to (The Earth and the Air) "- reflect the uniqueness of the Japanese musical instruments and their symbolism towards the Universe. Music descends from the sky like an exquisite stream of light, with music flowing in the wind which seems to blow from nowhere, and meeting the people working on the ground, playing with them.

 With the change of season, Berio's music is encountered by the ancient sounds of Kyoto. The autumn wind, light, and people shall all breathe life into the dreams of Berio.

International Performing Arts Festival in Japan ("Classical Music NEWS" feature on July 30)
http://japansclassic.com/news/040730/01.html

 Akie Amou, Yoshiko Kawamoto, Naoko Yoshino and Yumiko Sakuma are the artists originally selected for inclusion at this site.

Akie Amou:
http://japansclassic.com/artists/kajimoto_40/akie_amou.html
Yoshiko Kawamoto:
http://japansclassic.com/artists/aspen_03/yoshiko_kawamoto.html
Naoko Yoshino:
http://japansclassic.com/artists/kajimoto_17/naoko_yoshino.html
Yumiko Sakuma:
http://japansclassic.com/artists/Millonconcert_03/yumiko_sakuma.html

The above concert is produced by the Japan Association of Classical Music Presenters
E-mail: info@classic.or.jp