June 11, 2026 — Kyoto Botanical Gardens.
June 12, 2026 — Nagai Botanical Garden, Osaka.
The flowers I encountered in these two gardens in early summer are brought together here with the violin of Jascha Heifetz.
The music is Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64.
Jascha Heifetz, violin.
Charles Munch, conductor.
Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Heifetz’s playing possesses an extraordinary precision and intensity.
Beyond his legendary technique, every phrase reveals the passion, elegance, and lyricism of Mendelssohn’s music with remarkable clarity.
Against this performance, I have placed the flowers photographed at Kyoto Botanical Gardens and Nagai Botanical Garden.
Flowers have no words.
Yet, like music, they possess stillness, joy, movement, and the radiance of life.
In the opening movement, the solo violin rises almost immediately, as if emerging from silence.
In the Andante, time seems to slow.
And in the finale, the music moves forward with brilliance and lightness, as though racing through sunlight.
The flowers answer each of these moments in their own way.
Kyoto on June 11, 2026.
Osaka on June 12, 2026.
Flowers encountered in two different places are united here within a single flow of time through Heifetz’s Mendelssohn.
Photography and music.
When two arts, born in different places and different eras, meet, a new landscape appears—one that did not yet exist on the days when the photographs were taken.
Jascha Heifetz.
Charles Munch.
The Boston Symphony Orchestra.
And the flowers of Kyoto Botanical Gardens and Nagai Botanical Garden.
Together with Mendelssohn’s timeless melody.