Arensky’s Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 32 carries a special story for HIMARI.
In an NHK feature on HIMARI, she herself recalled an unforgettable encounter with this work.
One day, while searching for music, she happened upon a performance in which an extraordinary violinist was playing with astonishing brilliance.
She wondered who the violinist was and looked up the performer.
To her surprise, it was Ida Kavafian, her own teacher at the Curtis Institute of Music.
That encounter inspired HIMARI to dream of performing Arensky’s Piano Trio No. 1 herself one day.
And that dream eventually became reality.
For me, another remarkable connection emerged from this performance.
Recently, in preparation for hearing Dvořák’s Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104 performed by the Kyoto Symphony Orchestra under Nodoka Okisawa, I created a video work using a performance by cellist Sakura Toba.
Then yesterday, when I watched the newly released Arensky performance, I was astonished to see Sakura Toba playing beside HIMARI.
That coincidence led me to look more closely at Toba’s career.
And another extraordinary connection appeared.
At the 2018 International Television Contest for Young Musicians “The Nutcracker” in Moscow, the records I examined showed Natsuho Murata winning the Gold Prize and Sakura Toba the Bronze Prize in the strings category.
The following year, in 2019, HIMARI won the Gold Prize.
Natsuho Murata.
Sakura Toba.
HIMARI.
Three remarkable young musicians, each revealing extraordinary talent from childhood, unexpectedly became connected in my mind through one chain of musical encounters.
And now HIMARI is performing the Arensky trio she once dreamed of playing after hearing her teacher Ida Kavafian.
Beside her is Sakura Toba.
It feels like something more than coincidence.
Music leads us to musicians.
Talent encounters talent.
Admiration passes from teacher to student, and across time, those separate paths converge in a new performance.
There is Arensky’s melancholy and beauty.
There are young musicians meeting at a particular moment in their lives.
Listening to this performance, I found myself thinking once again:
The history of music is also the history of human encounters — of admiration passed from one generation to the next, and of those encounters giving birth to new, unforgettable performances.