En Vers (1980)

If the distant, wide-spread octaves near the beginning of Akira Miyoshi’s En Vers remind you of the opening of Debussy’s Pour les sonorités opposées that is probably what the composer intended. Myoshi studied composition at the Paris Conservatoire in the 1950s and, although there are significant Japanese elements in his music, French culture has clearly been a formative influence on his creative personality. The Debussy and Ravel allusions in the titles of some of his piano pieces - Du blanc au noir, Pour le piano, Miroir - give a good idea of where his sympathies are.

En Vers was written as a test piece for the Piano Division of the First International Music Competition of Japan in 1980 and, like Pour les sonorités opposées, is a study in the control of dynamics in fine detail. Unlike the Debussy study, however, much of it - most of the quicker second half of the piece - is concerned with the louder end of the dynamic range. After a slow and quietly melodious opening section, mainly in a curiously calculated 2.5/8 time and echoing here and there with the distant octaves, the tempo accelerates and the dynamic level rises to forte. From there, as the tempo continues to accelerate, the dynamic level rises eventually to ffff and, with the wide-spread octaves now in full close-up, stays there through a brilliant cadenza leading to a prolonged and shattering tremolando exchange of dissonances between the two hands. A sudden fall in both dynamic level and tempo recalls the opening of the work in a closing section which ends with an fff on the highest C of the instrument poised over a ppp on its lowest A.