CONCERTO FOR CLARINET AND ORCHESTRA "The Principle of Whirling（2024）

Yasuaki Itakura is a rare and outstanding musician. I have had the good fortune to work with him many times in the past in his roles either as a conductor or as a clarinettist. The clarinet was a familiar instrument to me during my teens when I played it in a wind band and a junior orchestra. Knowing my past experience of the instrument, Itakura pointed out to me on one occasion that it was strange that I hadn’ t composed a clarinet concerto. Considering that I had previously composed four piano concertos and several concertos for other instruments, I could see that he had a point. It didn’ t take me long to get to work on it because I had a clear vision of the piece in my mind from the outset. I wanted to take advantage of the full pitch range of the clarinet as well as of the instrument’ s beautiful square wave-like tone and its agility. The solo clarinet would have recourse to its distinctive gyratory features which would then spread through the orchestra. The orchestral clarinets would serve as the medium for ‘contaminating’ the orchestra with this germ of an idea. This was my concept for the piece. Yasuaki Itakura is given free rein at the head of the Tokyo Sinfonietta, which he directs. I composed this work in the summer and autumn of 2024 with such sights and sounds in mind.