2018.10.28

TOKYO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Dream Concert Vol.107

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Sun. 28th October 2018, 2:00p.m.

Fuchu-no-Mori Art Theater, Dream Hall

Conductor = Michiyoshi Inoue
Piano= Yukio Yokoyama

S.Rachmaninov : Piano Concerto No.2 in C minor, op.18
N.Rimsky-Korsakov : Symphonic Suite “Scheherazade”, op.35

【Message】

Today’s concert was to “revive” exactly the same program as the concert I canceled four and a half years ago, as I had to be hospitalized to “survive” pharyngeal cancer. Jesus resurrected three days after his death, but in my case, I didn’t need to die to “resurrect” my program.
Mr. Yukio Yokoyama served as the soloist for Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto. It was definitely thanks to him that we had a lot of attendees. I suppose it was also thanks to the popularity of our “Queen Scheherazade” (from Rimsky-Korsakov’s symphonic suite with the same name). In general, people are not willing to spend a precious Sunday full of bright sunlight so readily for going to a classical concert… Indeed, it was bright and clear today, through the grace of the Lord Jesus! The days grow shorter in autumn though……

The Tokyo Symphony Orchestra and I remain neither too close to nor too distant from each other, they sometimes invite me to conduct. They have been really busy since a lot time ago. I’m wondering how to qualify them in a word……well, one of their two concertmasters Mr. Gleb Nikitin gave me the expression when we were chatting right after the dress rehearsal: “the musicians drifting at the mercy of a severe floating world”. The relationship of me and Mr. Nikitin who served as the soloist for “Scheherazade” is also not too close, nor too distant. (Mr. Akira Mizutani, who is the other concertmaster, was in the audience with his cute son today!) Mr. Nikitin is from Russia. In 1993, I conducted his first concert in Japan as a concert master of the Sapporo Symphony Orchestra.

I remember doing naughty things and then being scolded roundly by a former general director of the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra Mr. Shigeto Kanayama. Mr. Kazuyoshi Akiyama, who is currently a Conductor Laureate of the orchestra, was my teacher when I was studying at the Toho Gakuen School of Music (he founded this tradition of “naughty things”!). The other Conductor Laureate Mr. Hubert Soudant won the same conducting competition as me, held in Milan (Mr. Riccardo Muti too), so we had the same starting point. All these human ties in a floating world… how strange they are!
On the other hand, before I realized it, almost all the orchestra members had been changed with time. What I only know is that, as employees, they aren’t treated better than fifty years ago. They live in a severe world. For all that, I’m sure they will continue to sing and relate music at their wonderful home Muza Kawasaki Symphony Hall, after the example of Queen Scheherazade who keeps telling a story night after night in the “Arabian Nights”. Their Music Director Mr. Jonathan Nott devotes himself to the orchestra’s further development!

In this country there is a common saying “The customer is king”, but audience of concerts should be distinguished from customers of convenience stores. Dear audience, please keep acting like a true king, like today’s warm one. Thank you!!