A beautiful and brave new world welcomes Sanae Yoshida’s foray into microtonal music
Kate Wakeling
My Microtonal Piano Works by Eivind Buene, Andreas Gundersen, Keiko Harada, Oyvind Maeland, Michelle Agnes Magalhaes
Sanae Yoshida (piano)
Lawo LWC1273 63:03 mins
This fascinating recording project takes us on a beguiling journey through the world of microtonality. Pianist Sanae Yoshida defines the ‘microtonal piano’ as a piano which includes intervals not found in the standard 12-tone scale, whether this be through de-tuning, string harmonics/preparations or ‘other microtonal modes of playing’. She’s commissioned five composers to explore it and the results prove intriguing and arresting, while Yoshida’s commitment shines in her poised, imaginative playing.
Of the five works featured, perhaps the most accessible is Eivind Buene’s Three Studies for Microtonal Piano. Buene took as his starting point three
Schubert piano sonatas, which he then fragmented and re-imagined. The effect is at once magical and disconcerting: Schubert’s familiar musical gestures are transformed into something profoundly otherworldly. Several of the works conjure not dissimilar stark, spare soundscapes, including Andreas Gundersen’s hypnotic Microtonal Pieces and Michelle Agnes Magalhaes’s Snow Soul – where the piano strings are plucked and strummed to produce something like the sound of a harp.
The playful, jazzinfused Boiling Web by Øyvind Maeland provides a welcome contrast, and draws particularly on the piano’s percussive possibilities. But perhaps the most mesmerising of the works is 唄-媒-培(BAI-BAI-BAI) by Keiko Harada. In music of wonderous strangeness, the most unlikely of sounds fizz and shimmer before erupting with violent force.
This is a disc of terrific imagination and daring, and Yoshida deserves every commendation. PERFORMANCE
RECORDING
The most unlikely of sounds fizz and shimmer
Kinderszenen, Op. 15; Davidsbündlertänze, Op. 6; Arabeske, Op. 18
Tiffany Poon (piano)
Pentatone PTC 5187 128 59 mins
What an oddly inconsistent collection this is. Tiffany Poon’s Kinderszenen is lovely. She knows exactly how to take these exquisite miniatures seriously without overloading the music expressively. She’s never portentous or affected, the attention to detail is refined, and she has a good ear for the voices within the texture – the inner dialogue – that make these so much more than songs without words.
‘The Poet Speaks’ is very touching, but even more so the ‘Sleeping Child’ that precedes it. Innocence, yes, but viewed through the eyes of tender experience. Listening to the whole thing is like following a beautiful, quirky, slightly melancholic bedtime story.
After that comes a performance of Arabeske which is good, well shaped, but without getting quite so deeply beneath the surface. Then