Juan Carlos Laguna performs Il Libro dei cinque anelli 五輪書 (Tribute to Miyamoto Musashi) by Marco De Biasi with Taro Kobayashi (Wa Daiko) and the Nomad Ensemble conducted by Norio Sato. This comes via De Biasi’s YouTube channel. An absolutely wonderful new work and brilliant performance. Here’s what De Biasi mentions about the piece:
The music uses the text of The Book of Five Rings (五輪書, Gorin-no-sho) by Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) as a pretext to develop a dialogue between myself (as a composer and a human being) and Heihō (兵法), a Japanese term meaning ‘strategy’, ‘tactics’ or ‘the art of war’.
From an architectural perspective, the structure of the text determines that of the music. The musical score consists of two movements, each divided into three parts. Each part corresponds to a chapter of the book: Prologue, Book of Earth and Book of Water belong to the First movement, whilst Book of Fire, Book of Air and Book of Void belong to the Second. Read much more at the YouTube description.
- World Premiere: Tokyo Opera City Hall – July, 13th, 2026
- The piece was commisioned by Satoshi Ikegami Fondation.
- Dedicated to Juan Carlos Laguna
- Nomad Ensemble
- Norio Sato – Conductor
- Dogen Kinowaki: Flute
- Hideo Kikuchi: Clarinet
- Chiyoko Noguchi: 1st Violin
- Wakako Hanada: 2dn Violin
- Fumiko Kai: Viola
- Aki Kitajima: Cello
- Yoji Sato: Double Bass
- Ken’ichi Nakagawa: Piano
- Noriko Miyamoto: Percussion
- Movements
- Prologo 00:00
- Terra 00:03:31
- Acqua 00:06:11
- Fuoco 00:12:38
- Aria 00:15:08
- Vuoto 00:17:13
