November 29 we invite you to a concert of piano music in which the works of Lithuanian composer Vytautas Bacevičius and Japanese composers Kishio Hirao, Toru Takemitsu and Joji Yuasa will be performed by pianist Yusuke Ishii from Tokyo.
in 2019 after arriving in Lithuania, Yusuke Ishii (1980) studied at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theater, where he obtained a master's degree in musicology. He is currently continuing his art studies at the Lithuanian Cultural Research Institute's doctoral program.
The performer and researcher has been studying the work of Vytautas Bacevičiaus (1905-1970), a composer and pianist, an outstanding personality in the history of Lithuanian music, one of the first avant-garde artists in interwar Lithuania. This year, the Lithuanian Music Information Center will release a vinyl record of his works, the creation of which was initiated and recorded by Yusuke Ishii himself. Having performed several works from this album on the occasion of its performance, the pianist will also combine the music cosmologies of Lithuanian and Japanese composers in his program.
It was not by chance that Yusuke Ishii chose three Japanese composers for the concert: Hirao (1907-1953), Takemitsu (1930-1996) and Yuasa (1929). Bacevičius's contemporary Hirao, being an exceptional case in the Japanese music scene at the time, also studied in Paris. Although there is no direct connection between them, the early music of Bacevičius and Hirao has a French touch.
The performer chose Takemitsu, who became a classic of Japanese composers, not only because his music is close to him, but also because it echoes Olivier Messiaen. By the way, Messiaen's work had a strong influence on Bacevičius as well. Like Bacevičius, Yuasa pursued the idea of cosmic music, but in a slightly different way. An important word that Yuasa often uses is cosmology. In a figurative sense, it is a concept that includes each person's individuality, life context and personal experiences, as well as regional, ethnic and current era characteristics. His cosmology is based on a Buddhist worldview, which is also felt in the concert piece "Cosmos Haptic II - Transfiguration", created in 1986.
"I'm interested in juxtaposing two cosmologies - Bacevičius' extremely human view of the universe and the cosmicity of Yuasa's music based on Eastern philosophy," the pianist shares his thoughts before the concert.
