Category Archives: News

Our latest publications include 3 works by Kishio Hirao(1907-1953), a Japanese composer of the pre-WW2 era. He is also known as a translator of Messiaen’s “Technique de mon language musical”. He studied at Scola Cantorum in France under Vincent D’Indy before WW2. Some works are published by Alphonse Leduc in France, but he couldn’t see them; he died at the age of 46. Very eminent talent in his generation.

-Sonate pour piano (revised version in 1951)
His sonate, one of the masterpieces of Japanese composer, illustrates a fusion of both European and Japanese sonority. 2 years before his premature death, he revised it and it has been unpublished.
https://muse-press.com/en/item/mp02302/

-Sonatine for piano (1951)
Rarely found item. It is appeared in his writings “Let’s compose together – our own music”, but totally forgotten. The manuscript is rescued from a trash can by the composer’s daughter, Haruna Hirao, pianist.
https://muse-press.com/en/item/mp02301/

-Variations on the theme of “Kōjō no Tsuki” for flute(or Okuralo), voice and piano
Short variations based on a very famous Japanese song melody. Okuralo is a flute-like instrument with a hint of the timbre of Shakuhachi, Japanese woodwind made of bamboo, and is innovated by a Japanese entrepreneur, Jirokichi Okura. Unpublished.
https://muse-press.com/en/item/mp02303/

For those who love and collect the French piano music, a coming album would be a must-listen CD. The Japanese pianist Kotaro Fukuma will release an album « French Romance ». As the name suggests, the album features the French piano music by various composers such as Poulenc, Satie, Fauré, Ravel and Weissenberg, including his own piano transcriptions. It will be released on Naxos Japan as a digital download and CD on 17th of April 2019. One of Muse Press’ publications « 6 arrangements of songs by Charles Trenet » which is a set of songs arranged for piano by the Bulgarian-French pianist Alexis Weissenberg has been also recorded on the album. In fact, Kotaro is the first Japanese pianist who performed all arrangements in one concert.

As previously described, Kotaro’s impressive transcriptions for piano: Ravel’s La valse, Satie’s Je te veux and Lenoir’s Parlez-moi d’amour are also included. One of them, Je te veux was recently published by Muse Press.

This is a video in which Kotaro talks about the album. (in English)

Information
Album title: France Romance
Artist: Kotaro Fukuma
Label: Naxos Japan
Catalog No: NYCC-27308
Release Date: 17th April, 2019

Contents
Debussy: Rêverie
Debussy: La plus que lente
Fauré: No. 5 Improvisation & No. 8 Nocturne from 8 Pièces brèves, Op.84
Fauré: 3 Romances sans paroles, Op.17
Ravel: Pavane pour une infante défunte
Ravel: La valse (transcribed by Kotaro Fukuma)
Satie: Gymnopédie No. 1
Satie: Je te veux (transcribed by Kotaro Fukuma)
Poulenc: Improvisation No. 15 – Hommage à Edith Piaf
Poulenc: 3 Novelettes
Weissenberg: 6 arrangements of songs by Charles Trenet
Lenoir: Parlez-moi d’amour (transcribed by Kotaro Fukuma)

Recording Date
Kashiwazaki-City Performing Arts Center – Artforet in Japan, on 28-30 November 2018
Piano: C. Bechstein D-280
Director & Recording Engineer: Toshiki Muto
Assistant Engineer: Yukio Kojima
Post-production Engineer: Atushi Kawanami
24bit/352.8kHz DXD Master

Available for pre-order:
Amazon.com
Presto Classical
fnac

We are very proud to announce that Fukuma Kotaro’s piano transcription “Je te veux” will be published in December. The pre-sale will be held at the recital on 1st of December and it will be available for purchase online through the web shop of Muse Press from 10th of December.

Kotaro Fukuma described his transcription as follow:
I made this transcription in 2013 as a surprise encore at a Paris concert. A few years before that concert I had visited the Satie House/Museum in Honfleur and enjoyed seeing funny and eccentric objects in the museum (like a pear with wings!). I felt like I was in an amusement park, and I tried to translate that feeling in this famous song by adding various ornaments to the simple melodies, so the listener encounters a new “attraction” every time the theme comes back.

Fukuma Kotaro’s Profile

photo by Takuji Shimmura

Born in Tokyo, Kotaro Fukuma has received many high awards in international competitions. At the age of 20, Kotaro won both First Prize and the Chopin Prize at the 15th Cleveland International Piano Competition. Since then his concert career has developed on five continents.

Kotaro has performed solo in major concert venues, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Wigmore Hall, Konzerthaus Berlin, Salle Gaveau, Victoria Hall, Forbidden City Concert Hall and Suntory Hall. His performances with orchestras include the Cleveland Orchestra, Moscow Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, Finnish Radio Symphony, Dresden Philharmonic, Toulouse National Capitole Orchestra, Lille National Orchestra, Galicia Royal Philharmonic and NHK Symphony Orchestra.

Kotaro Fukuma has released commercial CDs from Naxos, ARS Produktion, Éditio ns Hortus, Orpheus Classical, DENON and Accustika.

www.kotarofukuma.com

We are proud to announce that Alexis Weissenberg’s 6 arrangements of songs by Charles Trenet will be published by Muse Press LLC anticipated at the beginning of November 2018. The publication will be edited by the Canadian composer-pianist Marc-André Hamelin who re-discovered the arrangements and recorded them on his album Marc-André Hamelin in a state of jazz for the British music label Hyperion.

The publication is finally released!
https://muse-press.com/en/item/mp00701/

Alexis Weissenberg 1974 At home (c) J.D.Wilson

Alexis Weissenberg (1929-2012) has been recognized as one of the most successful pianists of his generation. His recordings have been issued on various labels including Philips, RCA, EMI, Deutsche Grammophon featuring Rachmaninoff, Liszt, Chopin, Beethoven, Bach and, Prokofiev. Additionally, he was also a composer, having started composition in childhood. His legacy includes not only original compositions but also transcriptions, cadenzas for Concertos, 4 musicals and song arrangements.
[Photo provided by Alexis Weissenberg Archive]

The arrangements include 6 songs by Charles Trenet: Coin de rue –  Vous oubliez votre cheval – En avril, à Paris – Boum! – Vous qui passez sans me voir – Ménilmontant.

The editor of the publication, Marc-André Hamelin comments on the arrangements as follow:

Mr. Nobody plays Trenet

Sometime in the late 1950s there appeared on the Lumen label an extended-play 45-rpm record called Mr. Nobody Plays Trénet. It contained unusually creative and entertaining piano settings of six songs by the French singer-songwriter Charles Trenet (1913–2001). The identity of ‘Mr. Nobody’ was kept secret until relatively recently, when it was revealed to be that of Alexis Weissenberg. Before I met him for the first time (2004), I had assumed that the reason for not issuing the recording under his own name had something to do with the fact that, at that time, a serious classical pianist dabbling in such trivialities as popular song would most likely have been compromising his own career. (How times have changed…this kind of thing is welcomed, even encouraged, by record companies now.) But I do remember him telling me that he simply didn’t think the end result was good enough…! […] After receiving a multitude of requests for these scores over the years, I am thrilled that they are now finally being made available.

Some years ago, the family of Alexis Weissenberg discovered four of these six arrangements, in Weissenberg’s own hand. Therefore, this publication will comprise these manuscripts bracketed together with transcripitons of what is actually heard on the Lumen recording.

Title: Alexis Weissenberg – 6 arrangements of songs by Charles Trenet
Edited and Preface: Marc-André Hamelin
Contents: Coin de rue (Street corner) –  Vous oubliez votre cheval (You’re forgetting your horse) – En avril, à Paris (April in Paris) – Boum! (Boum!) – Vous qui passez sans me voir (You who walk by without seeing me) – Ménilmontant (Ménilmontant)
Price (tax-included): 3000 JPN
Release date: 10th of December

Please click following image for more details about Alexis Weissenberg.

We are very proud to announce that the piano music of Ronn Yedidia will be published gradually by Muse Press. As his first publications from Muse Press, two piano works Ether and Toward the Gardens of Heaven will be published on 6th of August. Its pre-release will be held at Shota Ezaki’s recital which will take place at the Kioi-cho Salon Hall on 5th of August with the presence of the composer.

Ether (1996)
Price：2900 yen (VAT included).
Date of release：6th of August, 2018（on the webshop of Muse Press）
Page numbers: 12 pages
Preface: Ronn Yedidia

Toward the Gardens of Heaven (1997)
Price：4900 yen (VAT included).
Date of release：6th of August, 2018（on the webshop of Muse Press）
Page numbers: 28 pages
Preface: Ronn Yedidia

Ronn Yedidia
Ronn Yedidia’s compositions have galvanized the attention of performing artists worldwide during the last two decades. His works have been featured in major concert halls and documented on film, radio and television. He has won high critical acclaim from leading newspapers around the world, as both composer and pianist.

Born in 1960 in Tel Aviv, Israel, he began his musical career as a child prodigy pianist, winning 1st Prize at the Young Concert Artists’ Competition of Israel at the age of eight. His main teacher and mentor was Israel’s first lady of the piano, Pnina Salzman, who herself was a protege of Alfred Cortot. Active as a performer for many years, Ronn decided at the age of 15 to shift his attention towards composition. In 1984 he entered the Juilliard School from which he holds a Doctor of Musical Arts Degree in composition. During his studies there under David Diamond and Milton Babbitt he received all the major prizes in composition, including the Lincoln Center Scholarship, the Irving Berlin Scholarship, the Henry Mancini Prize, and the Richard Rodgers Scholarship. He also won the Juilliard Composition Competition twice – in 1987 & 1989 – and as a result had his works performed at the Juilliard Theater and at Alice Tully Hall.

Soon after receiving his DMA in Musical Composition from The Juilliard School of Music in 1991, composer/pianist Ronn Yedidia decided to abandon all the common trends which represented mainstream contemporary music, and instead embarked on an individual journey toward the re-establishment of traditional tonal principles such as melody, harmony, form, aestheticism, drama and dialogue. His passion for folk, jazz and other non-classical genres of music which maintain tonality in their essence has helped him enhance his musical language. He has written for all instrumental mediums from solo through chamber to symphonic works, and for most vocal idioms including art song, pop/folk songs, and both sacred & secular choral works. The world premiere of his work “Steps In The Wonderland” was performed by The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in May, 2007. Major commissions include the San Antonio International Piano Competition, the Seattle Chamber Music Society and the Zamir Chorale of New York. In 1994, Yedidia was invited by Wanda Toscanini-Horowitz to edit and record the unpublished piano compositions by the legendary pianist Vladimir Horowitz.
Ronn’s compositions have been recorded by renowned artists and ensembles on many major labels such as EMI Classics, Naxos’ American Classics series, Hyperion Records and Sony BMG. His solo album “Yedidia Plays Yedidia”,
on Britain’s Altarus label, has galvanized the attention of numerous pianists and composers around the world. In addition to his many national and international awards, Dr. Yedidia has won special grants from both ASCAP and BMI, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. He is the co-founder and Classical Program Director of The New York Piano Academy in Manhattan.

The British pianist Mark Viner has written a piano transcription of Chorus of Hebrew Slaves from the Opera Nabucco by Giuseppe Verdi. Muse Press will publish the transcription on 2nd of July through our webshop.

The transcriber Mark Viner described his transcription as follows:

The motivation for writing this transcription came not only from an ardent love of Verdi’s immortal original, but the fact that there is a striking absence of any substantial arrangement of it in the piano literature; a circumstance curious to relate considering the universal popularity of the work during an especially fertile era of pianist-composers parading newly-minted transcriptions, paraphrases and fantasies on operas of the day.

While writing this transcription I sought to give as faithful and fulsome an impression of Verdi’s original within the confines of the piano as might be mustered. In doing so, it is my wish that this offering goes some small way towards filling a gap in the literature and upholding the tradition of the pianist-composer.

Price：1,500 yen (1,389 yen VAT excluded).
Date of release：2nd of July, 2018（on the webshop of Muse Press）
Page numbers: 8 pages
ISBN: 978-4-909668-06-6

Mark Viner is especially known as an interpreter of the romantic piano music. He has recorded CDs for Piano Classics, including the piano works of Charles-Valentin Alkan, Franz Liszt, Sigismond Thalberg, Cécile Chaminade. He is recently appearing on the front cover of International Piano Magazines 50th issue.

* * *

Mark Viner Profile

Mark Viner is recognised as one of the most exciting British concert pianists of his generation and is becoming increasingly well-known for his bold championing of unfamiliar pianistic terrain.

Born in 1989, he began playing at the age of 11 and two years later was awarded a scholarship to enter the Purcell School of Music where he studied with Tessa Nicholson for the next five years during which time he gave acclaimed performances at London’s St. John’s, Smith Square and the Wigmore Hall. Another scholarship then took him to the Royal College of Music where he studied with Niel Immelman for six years, graduating in 2011 with both first class honours in a Bachelor of Music degree and winning the Sarah Mundlak Memorial Prize for Piano after having gained the highest mark in the year for his final recital and, following a bursary from the Countess of Munster Musical Trust, he graduated with a distinction in Master of Performance in 2013.

After winning 1^st prize at the Alkan-Zimmerman International Piano Competition in Athens, Greece in 2012, where his official début recital in the Hellenic capital was hailed by the press as the most exciting musical event of 2012, engagements at home and abroad have flourished.  Invitations to festivals include the Pharos Arts Foundation, Cyprus, ProPiano Hamburg and Raritäten der Klaviermusik, Husum in Germany, Indian Summer in Levoča, Slovakia, and the Cheltenham Music Festival and Oxford Lieder Festival in the United Kingdom, while radio broadcasts include recitals aired on Deutschlandfunk and interviews on BBC Radio 3. Engagements in his hometown of Oxford include recitals at the Holywell Music Room, the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building and the Sheldonian Theatre where he made his début with the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra under the bâton of Marios Papadopoulos. On another occasion he was invited to play for the royal visit of H.R.H. The Prince of Wales. Following his affiliation with with Keyboard Charitable Trust, he has recently embarked on three extremely successful tours of the USA, Germany and Italy.

Aside from a busy schedule of teaching and performances he is also a published writer and his advocacy for the music of Charles-Valentin Alkan and Franz Liszt has led to his election as Chairman of both the Alkan Society and the Liszt Society in 2014 and 2017 respectively. He is very active in the recording studio and his recordings of music by Thalberg, Liszt and, more recently, Alkan on the Piano Classics label have garnered critical acclaim.

We are delighted to announce that we will publish an unpublished transcription “Home, sweet home” by Leopold Godowsky (the original piece was composed by Henry Bishop) with a preface by the Canadian composer-pianist Marc-André Hamelin.

Although Leopold Godowsky recorded the transcription on piano roll and Brunswick, its sheet music have never been published up to now for some unknown reasons. The pre-order of the sheet music will start at the recital by Marc-André Hamelin on 25th of June in Tokyo. And the online sales will start on 26th of June thorough the website of Muse Press.

Price：1,000 yen
Date of advanced sale：26th of June, 2018 – at this event
Date of general release：27th of June, 2018（on the webshop of Muse Press）
Page numbers: 8 pages
ISBN: 978-4-909668-05-9

The Italian pianist Vincenzo Maltempo  is one of the leading pianists of his generation. On the other hand, he is also buldingan incredible career as a composer and transcriber. Muse Press is finally ready to publish his transcripitons and cadenza.

Maltempo: Cadenza (to the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 by F. Liszt)
Wagner/Maltempo: Tristan und Isolde – Prelude (Transcription for piano)
Maltempo: 3 Piano Transcriptions of songs (Debussy, R. Strauss, Mahler)

We are delighted to announce the publication of Kohei Tanaka/Pianeet’s “GUNBUSTER FANTASY” & “Incomplete Concerto”. It will be available for advanced sale at the concert by Yui Morishita(Pianeet) & Takashi Yamada in Kanagawa on 26th of May, 2018. The general release will take place on 28th of May 2018 via our webshop.

The transcription for piano “GUNBUSTER FANTASY” was based on the Japanese composer Tanaka Kohei’s original pieces that were composed for the sci-fi anime “Aim for the Top!”. In fact, this anime is known as “Gunbuster” rather than “Aim for the Top!” outside Japan. What is the “Gunbuster” ?… It is a space-going giant robot which was developed by the human for fighting against the space monsters invading the earth. The “GUNBUSTER FANTASY” was completed by Pianeet (Autonym: Yui Morishita) in 2011 and recorded on his debut album called “Singularity“. In addition to the album’s release, a video of his performance of “GUNBUSTER FANTASY” can be available on YouTube and Niconico. Pianeet is describing this piece as below:

“GUNBUSTER FANTASY” has the structure which is intended to remind listeners of the original anime story, based on the original musics composed by Kohei Tanaka. It would be appropriate to regard the “FANTASY” as the combination of suite or medley of the original sound tracks and overture style. As regarding that the musical motifs of “Gunbuster” and “Noriko” are respectively “1st theme” and “2nd theme” of G minor sonata form, we will have deeper understanding of the importance of the two motifs and the whole structure of the work. The recapitulation part  is actually out of typical sonata form, but the tonal relation between the themes is intentionally theoretical.

The second transcription by Pianeet is “Incomplete Concerto”. This is originally composed by Kohei Tanaka and it was used for the TV anime “Violinist of Hameln” as an opening theme song. When Pianeet performed its transcription at a concert in Kanagawa, he described on Twitter as bellow:

Mr. Tanaka says that the Incomplete Concerto is one of the best three works ever he has composed at least until 2009.
I’m fascinated every time I play the piece. This is absolutely cool!

Acknowledgments:
Thank you very much to Masanori Enoki (composer, pianist) for helping to edit/proofread this publication.

Price：2,500 yen (2,315 yen VAT excluded).
Date of advanced sale：26th of May, 2018 – at this event
Date of general release：28th of May, 2018（on the webshop of Muse Press）
Page numbers: 52 pages
ISBN: 978-4-909668-03-5

Yui Morishita – Profile

Yui Morishita, piano Yui Morishita is a Japanese pianist and composer. After graduating from Junior and Senior High School at Komaba, Tsukuba University, Yui Morishita studied piano at Tokyo University of the Arts and its Graduate School. In 2004, he won second prize at the Tokyo Music Competition. At his final recital of the Graduate School in 2006, he was chosen as one of the outstanding students to take part in the Bösendorfer Joint Recital (held at Hamarikyu Asahi Hall). He has given solo recitals at Tokyo Bunka Kaikan Recital Hall and also performs widely as orchestral soloist, song accompanist, and chamber musician. In addition to his playing, he provides music for films and he writes too. He is a strong advocate of the music of Alkan: he has edited and written commentary for the Japanese editions of his music and he has published a series of articles for Piano Teachers’ National Association website. He gave an all-Alkan recital in 2013, commemorating the 200th anniversary of his birth. Morishita is Associate Producer of the Chofu Festival in Tokyo, and also music staff of the Conducting Department at the Tokyo University of the Arts. In the online community, especially on video-sharing sites such as YouTube, he is also known under the name of “Duke of Pianeet”, and his CD “Singularity” released in 2011 became Amazon Japan’s top-selling CD in classical music.

http://www.morishitayui.jp/