A Yamaha grand piano 31 years after,
Atbp.
JAPANESE Ambassador and Madame Koji Haneda tickled the ohrwurm of the chattering nabobs of Makati last Monday with performance by the pianist Motoki Hirai at the Embassy Residence. The London-based mophead celeb began with an unfamiliar piece, the early part of which sounded to this Philistine as perfect accompaniment for a whodunit silent movie.
Motoki Hirai then helpfully explained his opening piece to the rapt audience: It was his composition, “La Cinquintaine” – a polka which had met the approval of a famous Japanese composer, his grandfather Kozaburo Hirai. (But no kudos then from his discriminating father.) The young composer wrote it in 1986 – meaning by that reckoning, when he was just 13 years old!
More surprises would follow. Motoki thoughtfully led us by the hand with some more explanations as he traipsed through oeuvres, etudes, or just for the taste of it: Beethoven: 6 Bagatelles, Op. 126 Motoki Hirai: Folktale Pieces (2018) Dolores Paterno: Sampaguita Chopin (arr. Liszt): Maiden’s Wish Motoki Hirai: Autumn Song (2016) based on Hyakunin-Isshu
Chopin: Etude in A-flat, Op.25-1 “Aeolian Harp” Shumann: Traumerei, Op.15-7 Grieg: Wedding-day at Troldhaugen.
He obliged with two encores, Brahms: Lullaby and Beethoven: 7 Eccosaisen.
*** Spit & polish in his barong tagalog, the diplomat-turned-impresario, Ambassador Haneda, held up photos of Philippine President Corazon C. Aquino with the then Japanese Ambassador and Madame Kiyoshi Sumiya and the parents of Motoki after their performance in 1987 at the Embassy Residence. The father, Takeichiro Hirai (cellist), is a noted disciple of the legendary Pablo Casals; the mother, Minako Hirai, played on the selfsame de cola Yamaha piano that Motoki would traipse on 31 years later.
(I wonder if the parents also played for Cory “La Cinquintaine,” which their gifted son had composed a year earlier?)
BTW, the genes go back farther: Motoki’s paternal grandparents were also musically tuned – the composer Kozaburo Hirai and the grandmother Yumiko Hirai, a violinist.
*** Before anyone could protest, we were led to the inviting distraction of Japanese culinary selection prepared by the embassy’s chef Daisuke Suzuki. (Because you feast first with the eyes, it is an open secret that Japanese ambassadors have their choice of chef among their tools of trade.)
Foodie Julie Yap Daza spotted a delectable hairy crab. BTW, she also identified Dolores Paterno as the composer of “Sampaguita.” And Julie has an upright Steinway-Grotjahn among her credentials.
Tuesday the day after, Motoki played at the Japanese school, including his other composition, which he titled for the children, “The carabao and the cow.”
*** ABOUT THE SAME TIME, IN ANOTHER PLACE. Dr. Raul Sunico, our own enfant terrible of prodigious memory, had suggested some names for Ambassador Haneda and his lady to invite for the magical evening. But Sunico himself would be elsewhere that evening – for a concert date at the Elisabeth University of Music in Hiroshima. He had accepted the invitation for him and some of his University of Santo Tomas Voice faculty who had graduated from there.
Elisabeth University of Music (EUM) or its Japanese name Erizabeto Ongaku Daigaku is a Jesuit university in Hiroshima, Japan. The Belgian Jesuit Father Ernest Goossens began a music classroom for the young right after the devastation of the atomic bomb. In 1947, Fr. Goossens opened the “Hiroshima Music School” with about 100 students and would later rename it after the late Belgian Elisabeth Queen Mother, who was patroness of the school in the 1950s. It evolved into a full university of music by 1963, with the doctorate established in 1993.
*** We may not speak Nippongo nor can they read our Balarila; but the seductive lilt and passionate interludes from pianissimo to crescendo bridge the Babel of tongues.
*** AT ANOTHER TIME, ELSEWHERE. Sir Thomas More, an English lawyer, writer, and bosom friend of King Henry VIII, is historically remembered for his principled refusal to take an oath accepting the English monarch’s claim to be the supreme head of the Church of England. More’s defense in accord with the law: Silence means consent.
Asked about China exercising selfrestraint in the disputed South China Sea, Secretary of Foreign Affairs Teodoro Locsin Jr. said that China was silent. “China didn’t say anything. But President Rodrigo Duterte was very clear: ‘Let’s exercise restraint.’ [China had] no response… you can interpret it as you want.”
I cannot predict how our South China Sea controversy will unfold. Do we keep or recover our fabled islets from interloper, or lose our head like Sir Thomas More? PH named our part of the waters the “West Philippine Sea.” Gary Lising has a less controversial but geographically more accurate suggestion: “South of China Sea.” Abangan.
*** NOW SHOWING. Ayala Museum opens at 6 p.m. today a tour d’horizon of works by another enfant terrible grown older. TERRITORY occupies two floors of the museum to ring in the new and the old works of Gus Albor (200 paintings, drawings, installation art owned by the artist or borrowed from collectors). Catch this Christmas treat (from 26 November 1918 to 10 February 2019). A younger Albor first exhibited at the original Ayala Museum in 1991. FEEDBACK: