Saturday 9 March 2013

Takemitsu Shocker !

Thursday evening saw us selling CDs in the Apex, Bury St Edmunds. The event was a fairly well-attended piano recital by Noriko Ogawa.

It's a shame the hall wasn't completely full, because her performance was wonderful. The Mozart and Beethoven would each have justified the entrance money on their own, but in the second half, this tiny, twinkling, utterly charming lady absolutely thundered through the Liszt B minor sonata, exploring the heights and depths of emotions, extremes of power and delicacy, and the absolute summit of virtuosity.  It just didn't seem physically possible.

After the performance, Miss Ogawa was kind enough to come and sign copies of the CDs that we sold, and meet the audience. First question - "do you work out at a gym? Surely you must do special exercises?" I cannot reveal the answer, because I didn't hear it, but I bet she spends more time practicing the piano than she does at the gym.

We were surprised that we sold all the copies we had of her recording of the complete piano music of Toru Takemitsu, who doesn't often feature on "Desert Island Discs".   She opened the second half with his "Rain Tree Sketch II", and it was a captivating, utterly beautiful sound world. It was so beguiling that we sold out and took orders for more.

The other sell-out was of her box set of the complete piano music of Debussy. Six CDs by a world-class artist for the price of two!

We have a number of her CDs at special prices on offer until March 16th, including her latest release of Mozart Sonatas.
Unfortunately all the signed ones have gone, but the music is utterly beautiful !