F-fragments

The Japanese composer Keiko Harada “is a rarity among modern composers inasmuch as she accepts the great ‘mystery’, the movement of her own soul, as the wellspring of her creativity. It seems as if her ear can discern the sound in which a leaf lives, the sound that a drop of water sends out to the universe. A mysterious power is at work here, a power that listens and imagines, builds impressions into solid forms, works them into musical notation, and gets musicians to perform scores they swore could never be performed.” (Ayumu Yasutomi)

“F-fragments” for accordion and piano was composed in 2012, as Japan’s third major incident of radioactive contamination continued to unfold. The composition, composed during the worst crisis in postwar Japan, takes as its motif the tension between the energy of the human body and the radioactivity and harassment that are destroying it.

“Book I” is the ambitious realization of a compositional concept, in which the internal condition of the performer is composed at the moment of performance. Each of the four movements has a different character, and each demands that the performer take on a different character. The performer has to employ his every technique and completely open his five senses.

Making reference to Johann Sebastian Bach's “Well-Tempered Clavier”, Harada's work “Nach Bach” consists of 24 pieces each of which takes the music of Bach as it wells up from the abyss and weaves it into an incandescent tapestry. Like a radiant body, the sound that pours forth from the piano frolics, laughs, prays, and finally returns to its source, the cosmos. The present CD contains seven selected pieces from this composition.