On May 13, 2021, I photographed 532 images of roses at Nakanoshima Rose Garden in Osaka, Japan, using a Sony α99 in ARW (RAW) format.
This visual work was conceived after I listened to Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, Op. 115, especially its First Movement.
The moment I heard the opening movement, I felt something profound, and the photographs I had taken at Nakanoshima Rose Garden on that day immediately came back to me.
As I began arranging the photographs, something remarkable happened.
The 532 photographs of roses, followed by approximately 30 photographs of the buildings around Osaka Station taken later that same day, matched the duration of this performance almost perfectly.
The sequence therefore became a single visual journey: from roses filled with color, light, and life in Nakanoshima to the urban landscape of central Osaka.
The original photographs were taken in Sony ARW (RAW) format and converted to JPEG for the production of this photographic work.
JOHANNES BRAHMS
Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, Op. 115
Brahms composed the Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, Op. 115 in 1891, at the age of fifty-eight.
It is one of the supreme masterpieces of his late chamber music and one of the greatest works ever written for clarinet and string quartet.
The work owes its existence to Brahms’s encounter with the exceptional clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld of the Meiningen Court Orchestra.
Brahms had been considering withdrawing from composition, but hearing Mühlfeld’s playing awakened his creative imagination once again.
For Mühlfeld, Brahms composed the Clarinet Trio in A Minor, Op. 114 and the Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, Op. 115, followed later by the two Clarinet Sonatas, Op. 120.
From its opening measures, the Quintet possesses an extraordinary sense of inwardness.
The clarinet does not stand above the string quartet as a virtuoso soloist.
Instead, all five instruments breathe together, exchanging melodies and memories as though they were speaking with a single voice.
The First Movement, Allegro, begins with a gently undulating figure in the strings.
The clarinet gradually emerges from within this texture rather than dramatically entering from outside it.
Light and shadow continuously cross one another.
Warmth appears, disappears, and returns.
There is sorrow in the music, but it is never merely tragic.
There is also tenderness, memory, acceptance, and an extraordinary sense of human warmth.
The Second Movement, Adagio, forms the spiritual center of the work.
Over the quiet sonority of the strings, the clarinet sings a long and deeply expressive melody.
In the central section, the atmosphere changes dramatically, and the clarinet becomes passionate and almost improvisatory before the serenity of the opening returns.
The Third Movement, Andantino — Presto non assai, ma con sentimento, begins with an intimate conversation and then moves into more animated music, while retaining the subtle shadows characteristic of Brahms’s late style.
The Final Movement, Con moto, is a set of variations.
Near the conclusion, music recalling the opening of the First Movement returns, bringing the entire Quintet full circle.
The work does not end in triumph.
It ends quietly in B minor, leaving behind an extraordinary sense of stillness.
Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet has often been described as “autumnal.”
Its beauty lies not simply in sadness, but in the feeling of looking back across the passage of time — remembering what has disappeared while still recognizing the warmth and beauty that remain.
That quality is precisely what led me back to these photographs.
THE PHOTOGRAPHS
Nakanoshima Rose Garden, Osaka, Japan
May 13, 2021
532 photographs of roses, followed by approximately 30 photographs of the buildings around Osaka Station.
Camera: Sony α99
Original format: ARW (RAW)
Converted to JPEG for this production.
MUSIC
Johannes Brahms
Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, Op. 115
Performance: Vienna Chamber Ensemble
Source performance publicly available on YouTube.
CLOSING
May 13, 2021.
Five hundred and thirty-two photographs of roses at Nakanoshima Rose Garden, followed by the buildings around Osaka Station at the end of the same day.
From the living colors of roses to the forms and lights of the city, the photographs preserve the passage of a single day in Osaka.
The starting point for this work was Brahms.
When I heard the First Movement of the Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, Op. 115, I felt something that could not be fully expressed in words.
The photographs of that day immediately returned to my mind.
Then, when I assembled the complete sequence, the duration of the photographs and the duration of the performance matched almost perfectly.
It was an unexpected coincidence, yet it made the photographs and the music seem as though they had been waiting to become one work.
Roses bloom and eventually disappear.
Cities, too, change with time.
But within photographs and music, the light, colors, and memories of May 13, 2021 remain.