Today, I am heading to Festival Hall.
At three this afternoon, I will hear the Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra’s 602nd Subscription Concert, conducted by Jonathan Nott.
Ligeti’s Lontano, Debussy’s Nocturnes, and Brahms’s Symphony No. 1.
For this day, I have been creating photographic video works set to these three pieces and publishing them on YouTube.
For Brahms, 745 views of Japan, journeying from Hōryū-ji to the Seto Inland Sea, Nara, and Uji.
For Debussy, 229 photographs of the autumn light gracing Osaka’s Umeda over the October holiday weekend.
For Ligeti, 88 photographs of light captured on an afternoon in that same Umeda.
As I bring photographs together with music, depths I had not yet seen emerge in familiar streets and in landscapes I have visited.
The memory of taking a photograph and the present moment of listening to music meet within a single image.
Carrying with me the time I have spent with these three pieces, I am heading to the concert hall today.
The music I have heard repeatedly in recordings by Karajan and Abbado will today rise before my eyes through Nott and the Osaka Philharmonic.
Once the first note sounds, what follows is time shared only by those present.
From the distant sounds of Lontano to the shifting colors of Nocturnes.
And then, to Brahms’s Symphony No. 1.
When we reach that finale, what will I feel today?
I shall listen for the answer in the hall.
Below, I have attached the three works I created for this day.