Skip to main content
Department of Music
Music Hero Header Crop

Songs from Japan

Book tickets

13 November 2024 - 13 November 2024

7:30PM - 9:30PM

Durham University Department of Music, Palace Green, Durham, DH1 3RL

  • £10 standard, £5 students, £1 under-18s.

Share page:

This unique concert, curated by Dr Amanda Hsieh, presents a selection of extremely beautiful early twentieth-century Japanese art songs, rarely heard in the UK. Music by composers such as Rentarō Taki, Kōsaku Yamada and Tatsunosuke Kishitani will be interwoven with European songs and operatic excerpts, just as they would have been performed in their original context.

This is the image alt text

Miku Yasukawa

These songs – exploring timeless themes of love, nature and travel – formed part of a musical landscape grounded in Japanese desires to explore a new musical medium in times of political turmoil and imperialist expansionism.

Miku Yasukawa is fast gaining a reputation as one of the most exciting young sopranos around, following her appearance as a finalist in the prestigious Guildhall Gold Medal competition at London’s Barbican Centre. She is partnered by Yoshie Kawamura, one of the North East’s finest pianists.

The concert is held in association with the even ‘Song Travels, with “Our Tenor” Yoshie Fujiwara’ at the Durham Clayport Library, on Monday 11 November, at 2–6pm, as part of the Being Human Festival.

Miku Yasukawa, soprano
Yoshie Kawamura, piano

 

Programme to include:

  • Rentarō Taki: Kōjō no Tsuki (荒城の⽉, ‘The Moon over the
    Ruined Castle’)
  • Kōsaku Yamada: Karatachi no Hana’ (からたちの花, ‘Trifoliate
    Orange’)
  • Tatsunosuke Kishitani: Hatsukoi (初恋, ‘First Love’)
  • Gaetano Donizetti: Prendi per me sei libero
  • Giacomo Puccini: Quando m’en vo’ 

Pricing

£10 standard, £5 students, £1 under-18s.