Quatuor A Cordes No. 1 / Three Movements For Wind Quintet

This release, part of the King Records contemporary music series, presents two significant chamber works by Michio Mamiya. Mamiya, a prominent Japanese composer known for his synthesis of traditional Japanese musical aesthetics with Western classical structures, wrote these pieces as quintessential examples of his mid-century academic output. The record highlights his ability to weave complex, polyphonic textures that remain grounded in a distinctive, often austere, tonal language.

The recording features the Quartet Chikashi Tanaka and The Aulos Quintet, both of which were highly regarded in the Japanese classical scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s. King Records issued this title as part of a concerted effort to document the evolution of 20th-century Japanese composition. While the record was received primarily within professional musicological circles and by dedicated enthusiasts of modern chamber music, it serves today as a vital archive of the sophisticated performance standards present in Tokyo’s classical recording industry at the time.