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Zen-On Releases New Publications by Masanori Kato and Shin-ichiro Ikebe

Jan. 25, 2024

Zen-On released two new publications on January 15: Masanori Kato's Kenbu Sansō for piano trio and Shin-ichiro Ikebe's STRATA XIII for flute and clarinet.

Masanori Kato's Kenbu Sansō was first performed by Tatsuki Narita (violin), Tatsuki Sasanuma (cello), and Masanori Kato (piano) on January 30, 2021 in the Recital Hall at Nagano City Arts Centre in a concert of chamber music featuring Masanori Kato. The composer notes:

"From around the start of the Covid epidemic, I found myself gravitating towards a style making positive use of harmonious materials. After a period of experimentation, this piano trio was the first work that I created in this style. The violinist and cellist who premiered the work were both specialists in this genre and the concert at which it was presented was a dense one featuring key works from the genre. I began thinking about how the rising excitement felt by the performers might be conveyed into an almost ecstatic realm and suddenly conjured up the idea of a sword dance.

I recall once attending a solemn ceremony in Aizu Wakamatsu in Fukushima Prefecture featuring a sword dance characterized by the contrast between stasis and latent dynamism. Supported by historical fact, the sword dance generated a sense of high drama. Of course I have made no attempt in this piece to depict this sword dance literally, but the tense atmosphere and internalized excitement that were features of the dance inspired my creativity as I worked on the piece.

The piano trio as a genre includes many comparatively large-scale works, and the length of this piece was determined by my feeling that there was room for a piece that could fit into a piano trio recital as an encore or in between major works in the repertoire. When we came to actually perform the piece, there was a sense of density that seemed to condense time in a manner that had something in common with the tense atmosphere of the sword dance.

The title of the piece is a neologism of my own invention denoting a trio (sansō) consisting of a musical dance performed as part of an imaginary ceremony dedicated to something in the distant past (kenbu).

I have performed this piece with many different players since the premiere, and on each occasion the performance has generated a sense of intense, compacted time."

Shin-ichiro Ikebe's STRATA XIII was commissioned by Mito Arts Foundation and premiered by Shigenori Kudo (flute) and Yoshinobu Kamei (clarinet) on February 8, 2020 at Concert Hall ATM in Mito, Japan as part of the concert “A Portrait of Shin-ichiro Ikebe.”


Kazushi Saito and Yasuaki Itakura perform Shin-ichiro Ikebe's STRATA XIII

Ikebe notes:

"Strata is the name I have given to a series of works based on an approach in which the pitch range of particular musical instruments is likened to geological strata. I have concentrated here on the multi-stratified combination of the different ranges of the flute and the clarinet. The pitch range of woodwind instruments is such that the lowest pitch is that produced by the full length of the instrument’s tube, while the upper pitch limit is indeterminate. Nevertheless, there are classical standards regarding this upper pitch limit, and I have strictly adhered to them on this occasion. I have avoided the multiphonics and microtones that feature frequently in contemporary music for woodwind instruments for the simple reason that they are not aesthetically pleasing sounds.

The flute and the clarinet are the most agile of all the woodwinds. I have striven to make maximum use of the functional characteristics of these two instruments as they hurtle through multiple horizontal and vertical strata. The two virtuoso performers who premiered the work provided me with inspiration for its composition."

To learn more about Masanori Kato and Shin-ichiro Ikebe, visit zen-on.co.jp.
Please note that the complete catalogue of Shin-ichiro Ikebe's works, as well as those by other Zen-On composers, including Tokuhide Niimi, Akira Nishimura, Hitomi Kaneko, and Kenji Sakai have been fully updated.

Masanori Kato
Kenbu Sansō (2021)
for piano trio
9'
View sample pages

Shin-ichiro Ikebe
STRATA XIII (2020)
for flute and clarinet
8'
View sample pages

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