The 2017 Beethoven MO-DE project was Quintet for Piano and Winds.

Very passionate colleagues from around the world gathered for this tour and together their personalities and experiences brought so much to the music. Every concert was approached with new ideas, respect and love to the wonderful pieces we played.

With such great colleagues, I recognized the greatness of Beethoven’s quintet again – the Operatic parts, improvisational ideas, simplicity and beauty of melodies, youthful humor and natural dialogues – so many aspects of this work already provides us with insights of his later works. And the maturity and entraptured beauty of Mozart has also emphasized the tone colors and harmony of wind instruments. We also enjoyed the different acoustics in each hall and the audience welcomed us so warmly.

I would also like to thank Dai Fujikura for his wonderful new piece “GO”, a piece we always had fun to discuss.How great it is to have such new work with this instrumentation, where one can exchange new ideas and play with such passion in each concert! I hope many musicians will perform this piece in the future.

Apart from the music, we all became such good friends by the end of the tour. In Okinawa – an incredible evening with great food, jokes and anecdotes …- when we celebrated with Habu-shu (Habu snake liquor), we also couldn’t stop talking about incredible, spontaneous, deeply-felt moments in the concert. Intoxicated with Sake as well as with music, I noticed how lucky I am to have such company. It was definitely one of the best tours I had and an experience I will never forget.