Mari Kawamura: MA ~ space between ~
Furious Artisans

Pianist Mari Kawamura fashioned her debut solo album around ma, an ancient Japanese concept meaning “interval” or “gap” and having to do with space and time and relatedly movement within silent or “empty” spaces. However enigmatic and oxymoronic the concept might appear, it finds its natural application in music or at least it potentially does, depending on the particular kind of music and composer chosen. On Kawamura's hour-long collection, works by Toru Takemitsu and Lei Liang offer excellent examples of ma's propensity for “charged stillness”; the inclusion of Franz Joseph Haydn's Piano Sonata in E flat Major, Hob. XVI:49 and Iannis Xenakis's Evryali, on the other hand, is all the more interesting for how much they don't seem to align with the concept.

Kawamura's gesture is deliberate, however, as in juxtaposing such contrasting pieces she aims to call attention to similarities between the works and show that ma-like structures also exist within music outside of Japan's sphere of influence. MA ~ space between ~ was recorded at the University of California's Conrad Prebys Concert Hall, the same school where she studied for her Doctorate in Contemporary Music Performance after studying at the New England Conservatory in Boston and before that London's Royal Academy of Music and Japan's Aichi University of the Arts. As a performer, she's given solo recitals at a number of venues and appeared at major festivals.

In a structurally satisfying design, MA separates works by Haydn, Xenakis, Takemitsu, and Katharina Rosenberger with six short movements from Lei Liang's Garden Eight, composed in 1996 and revised in 2004. The sustain pedal is depressed throughout Liang's piece and thus notes have a long decay, an effect the pianist likens to a drop of ink dissipating slowly into water. If one therefore thinks of the notes in this way, as each note sounds it does so with the previous one still resounding, making for a slow-motion stream of overlapping pitches. After its opening part, “Tian - Heaven,” establishes a meditative tone, Rosenberger's Torsion arrives with greater animation and patterns rippling up and down the keyboard. In exploring the idea of opposites and in transitioning between two points, the nine-minute work generates repeated moments of tension as the pianist moves fluidly between the poles and moments of calm and intensity.

Liang's “Di - Earth” reinstates the poetic stillness of the opener, but the restful state is quickly dispatched when the opening allegro from Haydn's three-part sonata makes its breezy and melodically enticing entrance. If any of the movements satisfies the ma criteria, it's the alternately solemn and singing adagio with its numerous stops, starts, and pauses; by comparison, the finale wends its joyous way with a breath rarely taken to slow its momentum. Takemitsu's represented by the two-part Rain Tree Sketch, the first instantly identifiable as the handiwork of the Japanese composer in its enigmatic poetry. Sprinkled throughout are short, fragmented phrases liberally separated by rests that allow the instrument's resonance to emerge when the sustain pedal is utilized. In this instance, Liang's “Nan - South” forms a seamless bridge from the first Takemitsu part to the other, the meditative second honouring the memory of Olivier Messiaen with chiming chords reminiscent of ones the French composer might have used. By comparison, Xenakis's Evryali enters in a firestorm of clangorous activity that instantly washes away the calm of Liang's “Hsi - West” and then proceeds to interrupt three torrential movements with pregnant pauses.

September 2024