Clarinet Quintet: Bardo I

Score title

Clarinet Quintet: Bardo I

Composer

Akira Nishimura

More about the composer

Date

Program note

After I had composed Clarinet Concerto “KAVIRA" in 2005, I wrote this quintet and dedicated it to Professor Karl Leister with all my respects like I had done to KAVIRA. In this quintet, the clarinet solo part is written for Boehm system clarinet in A. I had taken 2 years (2007-9) to complete this part. While that time, I was taught by Prof. Leister a lot. Following his direction and proposal, I finished carefully the final version.

This is a single movement work and the duration is ca. 20 minuets. It is a kind of fantasia based on an imaginal theme of “Bardo”.

“Bardo” in Tibetan Buddhism means the world where the dead soul goes by for 49 days from death to rebirth. “Bardo” has three periods. The first is separation of body and worldly memory from the dead soul. The second is encounter of soul with original substance. The third is preparation for afterlife, that is, rebirth. The first period is theme of this work, so I named the subtitle “Bardo I”.

Akira Nishimura