Yukiko Kojima: Akira Miyoshi – Piano Works

Akira Miyoshi (born 1933) is not just a contemporary of Japan's best-known composer, Toru Takemitsu (1930-96) but, like Takemitsu, has an aesthetic orientation that leans towards France. Unlike Takemitsu, he actually studied there, under Raymond Gallois-Montbrun and Henri Dutilleux, and the titles of the piano works recorded here are all in French: Sonate pour piano (1958), Chaines – Préludes pour Piano (1973), En Vers (1980) and Pour le piano – Mouvement Circulaire et Croisé (1995-98). Miyoshi was a child prodigy on the piano, and his music ruminates and coruscates with natural ease and force in the sensitive hands of Yukiko Kojima, even though the bass end of the Steinway Model B used for the recordings does at times show signs of strain. url.ie/ijz5