Kanno: Piano works / Light, Water, Rainbow…

In his compositions Yoshihiro Kanno bases himself on three idioms: Western instrumental music, Japanese traditional instruments, and computer music. Combining these various elements freely, as in the recent work Himiko – Memories of the Sun Goddess which fuses Western classical music and Japanese traditional music with Kabuki and Japanese classical dance. The pianist Noriko Ogawa is a champion of Kanno's music and has commissioned three of the works on the present disc, including the so-called 'Particle of Piano' series. The 'Particle series' is framed by two works which both incorporate computerized sounds – in the case of the opening Angel's Ladder it is the sound of the piano itself which at crucial points is processed, and in Lunar Rainbow it is that of a toy piano. The disc closes with the brief Prelude for Angel, composed in 1985 for the animated film Angel’s Egg (Tenshi no tamago) by Mamoru Oshii.