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PMR-0007
ANCIENT CITY -PIANO COLLECTION-

01. TEMPLE IN THE TWILIGHT / NAOYUKI ONDA
02. ERHU'S DREAM / MASAJI WATANABE
03. MEMORIES OF AN ANCIENT CITY / NAOYUKI ONDA
04. MISTY RAIN / RIKIYA YAMASHITA
05. A SO BI MA SHO / NAOYUKI ONDA
06. VERDUROUS MOUNTAINS / MASAJI WATANABE
07. RUSTLING IN THE WIND / NAOYUKI ONDA
08. FULL MOON / RIKIYA YAMASHITA
09. IN THE GARDEN AFTER THE RAIN / MASAJI WATANABE
10. AN OLD CHILDREN'S SONG / HARUKI MINO
11. PALACE IN THE SNOW / MITSUKO


amazon Ancient City - Various Artists

This album is made up of eleven pieces chosen by five composer/pianists with a great love for the piano, all working on one theme. The theme is as the title, the "Ancient City".

When we say the Ancient City, we think of Kyoto. For a thousand years until the capital was moved to Tokyo, it served as the center of the Japanese culture as its imperial capital. As you can see from the fact that 20% of the national treasures and 15% of the important cultural assets are concentrated in Kyoto, it has been the city of creativity and culture since the Heian Era. As for the musical aspect of the culture, imperial music was developed based on the pentatonic scales that was quite probably imported from China, then re-arranged into Japanese style. This was to become the Japanese scale.

There is a variety of Japanese scales but the representative one is the scale that is called the pentatonic and it consists of the five notes, "do re mi so ra". This scale is often found in the traditional folk songs and children's songs, as well as in pops. An example is the "Sukiyaki song" that a great many artists have in their repertories. This contains a melody that is beautifully representative of the pentatonic scale. The reasons why it became a great hit in Japan and number one on the American Billboard must be that the sounds of the pentatonic scale are nostalgic to the Japanese and exotic to the Americans.

But we are straying from the main topic, so let us get back. The work in this album is by five now living Japanese composer-pianists who visualized and sketched the images of the thousand year old capital Kyoto, using the pentatonic scale and with the instrument representative of the West with about 300 years of history, the piano. What drama is the instrument to express? It is Kyoto showing a different face in each of the four seasons. We hope you will enjoy this album as you stroll down the Sujaku Ouji (Main Street) of the ancient capital with us.