About “Harmony”

“Spring”; Spring in Japan starts from the blooming of the beautiful soft pink cherry blossoms announcing the season of farewell and a fresh beginning. Spring is a very special and most loved season by the Japanese and Mayuko Miyata is no exception.

For Mayuko Miyata, who spent her childhood in Japan, and now resides in Germany, spring is a season of nostalgia. Every beginning has an end, an old relationship follows a new one and every spring endures a long cold winter. Miyata remembers spending her first and last day of school under the bloom of the Japanese cherry blossoms. It is a time of greeting and bidding farewell to friends. This is exactly what Mayuko Miyata loves: The polarity of fragility and the energy of nature that creates “Harmony”.

Mayuko Miyata’s first solo album, “Harmony – Piano Works by Frédéric Chopin” was released in spring 2019 by Hey!blau Records. A collection of her inspirations decorates the cover of the new album; her beloved cat, the memories of the little pink cherry blossoms, and the beautiful scenery of the mountains of Salzburg. While the word “harmony” may sound as being something simple and light, Mayuko Miyata describes it as the merge of 2 opposing factors, a state of accord and unification, a point one cannot reach without the emotions of loss, anguish, disengagement and faith.

Harmony is not created – as one might intuitively imagine – like the Alpine chough flying swiftly above the mountains of Salzburg; but its elegant flight is the outcome of successful trials and errors, rejoice and grief, day and night, birth and death. Only the experience of both sides allows to create harmony, Miyata says. She emphasizes that all of these components exist in Chopin’s music and her pure touch strings out this duality from every single note of the 12 masterpieces.

Just like her love for the cherry blossoms, Chopin has always held a special position within Miyata’s life. She has dedicated a year studying his music under Lidia Grychtolowna in Poland. “Whenever I play Chopin I feel a sense of fulfillment” Miyata says, “By playing his music my whole being is merging into the notes and rhythms of Chopin”. “Playing his music does not mean that I have to empathize or adopt to his music. I am simply just myself“.

Having huge respect for Chopin, Miyata recalls that it was not an easy journey to record his pieces. It wasn’t only about flowing and delicate art of her playing, but it was more about reflecting the uncertainty yet rich and intense life experiences of Miyata into this recording.Mayuko Miyata has come across various challenges facing practical difficulties and internal conflicts; but just like the cherry blossoms enduring the long cold winter, in the spring of 2019, around at the same time the cherry blossoms started blossoming, Mayuko Miyata blew new life to her first solo album.

Text: Fanny Jimenez