A personal reaction to the impressive film 'Oppenheimer' - the tragic danger of submission to our all too human technological and intellectual seductions

 

The Pigeon of  Peace in flight from the Cenotaph at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park

In its quest for historic 'drama' and despite numerous prestigious cinema awards, the film inexplicably (and for me unforgivably), even arrogantly, entirely neglects the horrifying and continuing effects of the nuclear bomb on the hundreds of thousands of Japanese citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  

The 'Music for Peace'  Project arose from this cataclysm and also my essay: Hiroshima, Warsaw and Chopin - The glorious rebirth of two cities 

Below is my reminiscence of my visit to Hiroshima

I suggest you read this and come to a more balanced and universally human view of the brutal continuing effects of the bomb

This evening I have just arrived in Hiroshima in Japan from Warsaw on this is my first visit to the country. Such a long and tiring journey from Poland but worth every minute given the humanist aim. I intend to keep a daily internet journal of my experiences here over the next four days as part of an initiative known as the ‘Music for Peace’ project. Perhaps a few more personal observations as well.

The concept brings together communities of different nations and cultures, in this case musicians from Poland, France and Japan, performing together and engaged in workshops  and commemorative activities with the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra. This laudable aim is to achieve closer international cooperation and understanding. The passionate love of the music of Fryderyk Chopin in Japan scarcely need underlining. In the 17th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition organised by the National Fryderyk Chopin Institute (NIFC) in 2015, of the 455 pianists from 45 countries who applied, 88 were from Japan which was 20% of the total pianists who hoped to take part in this world famous event. Music is beyond words and is an universal uplifting message to humanity. 

At present such a move appears increasingly necessary as the threat of nuclear confrontation in the world inexorably increases. 

Modern Hiroshima - evening February 21st 2019

I wish to warmly thank the initiators of this project - the Project Adviser, Mr. Shoji Sato of the Kajimoto music agency and Secretary to the great Argentinean classical pianist Martha Argerich in Japan.  Also to thank the great pianist herself who wishes to connect through music the triumph and indestructibility of the human spirit that rebuilt Hiroshima and Warsaw following the unspeakable horrors of WW II. She has been appointed Peace and Music Ambassador of the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra. Music communicates effortlessly beyond language and can leap cross-cultural barriers promoting concord and understanding between nations. Yet can one merge Western and Eastern notions of art into an aesthetic that could promote world peace? One must at the very least maintain the faith to believe so.

The relationship between Poland and Japan is not a subject that is sufficiently considered, if thought about at all. 'Music for Peace' is an important humanist and musical celebration of the valiant national inspiration that rebuilt the great cities of Hiroshima and Warsaw after a catastrophic war. We must never forget these human sacrifices and their spiritual significance. Such conflagrations must never be repeated anywhere - well, one can, in fact must, hope despite Syria, Yemen....need I continue? The shared moral values of both countries, those of family, patriotism and honour were manifest throughout the creative reaction to almost total destruction. Hopefully the 'Music for Peace' project and a mutual love of the music of Fryderyk Chopin will add particularly significant symbolism to the 100th anniversary of the establishment of relations between Japan and Poland to be celebrated in 2020.

In a welcome return since the 1964 Summer Olympics, or Games of the XVIII Olympiad (第十八回オリンピック競技大会 or Dai Sanjūni-kai Orinpikku Kyōgi Taikai), this year will also welcome the arrival of international Olympic teams for the 2020 Summer Olympics or Games of XXXII Olympiad including the Polish Olympic team. In short, the significant year 2020 marks a unique and welcome international coincidence of humanism, musical culture and sport in what promises to be an unprecedented international event in Tokyo witnessed by millions across the world. 

Modern Hiroshima - view at breakfast

The city is impressively modern, clean with wide avenues and a prosperous atmosphere. To literally rise like a phoenix from the ashes is nothing short of a miracle of national spirit

Friday 22nd February 2019 

As usual with jet-lag I awoke early at 5.00 am and prepared for the full day ahead. As you can see from the above photo the view from the restaurant was dramatic. You can see the symbolic Atomic Bomb Dome (Genbaku Dome) in the middle distance. Before the horror that occurred at 8:15:17 a.m. local time on 6 August 1945 when the cruelly named 'Little Boy' was delivered, the building was known as the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall. 

Before the bomb, the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall

After the bomb

                                                                                                                                                     Photo: Dean S. Pemberton

Hiroshima today

Warsaw 1945 after its planned annihilation

Warsaw - Ruins of the Old Town 1945 and the heroic rebuilding

The Royal Castle in Warsaw after WW II and the present day

The Warsaw Skyline today

We (the guest musicians , conductor and guest journalists) laid flowers at the memorial in the elegantly landscaped park adjacent to the extensive museum dedicated to the bomb and the damage it unleashed : human, structural and spiritual.

Before the Cenotaph at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park

Back row Lt to Rt: Makoto Ozone (piano), Kamil Staniczek (Violin, Sinfonia Varsovia, Poland) Nicolas Franco (double bass, Sinfonia Varsovia, Poland) , Shoko Kanai (trumpet)

Front row Lt to Rt: Soichi Sakuma (concert master), Mathias Müller (Timpanist, Gewandhausorchester, Germany) Nadia Médiouni (Violin, Orchestra de Paris),

Christian Arming (HSO principal guest conductor and Music Director, Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liege), Gilles Henry (Violin, Orchestra de Paris),

Robert Markow (music journalist, Montreal, Canada) Michael Moran (author and music critic, Warsaw, Poland)

(note a Pigeon of Peace perched atop the Cenotaph)

Inside this cenotaph are inscribed the names of nearly 300,000 people who lost their lives when the bomb exploded

The need to remember this first atomic bomb, the devastation it unleashed then and the exponentially more powerful nuclear threats that are still with us, are powerfully expressed here at the memorial and in the museum visit that was to follow. As recently as September 2017, a thermonuclear device with an explosive power of between 100-370 kilotons was tested. A yield of 100 kilotons would make the test 'only' six times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima (BBC). The 'Music for Peace' project will hopefully become an emotionally expressive tool to at least heighten awareness of the central idea of 'Arming' and 'Disarming'. The old should never forget the history of it, whilst the young must learn of this appalling event and become increasingly aware of existing threats to the future of mankind. 

That Hiroshima was the first city in the world to be destroyed by an atomic bomb puts the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra in a unique position to express this human tragedy through music, war being the heinous, irrational obverse of the human coin. Hopefully through music we can move beyond the misleading nature of language to promote an increased degree of international cross-cultural understanding, perhaps even prevent 'ordinary' people (and perhaps furthermore world leaders) from  forgetting this terrifying event. In view of these horrors, it came as no surprise to me to learn that the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven is possibly the most widely popular classical music work performed in Japan, hundreds of times each year often with augmented choirs of many thousands of singers.  

Threnody (for the Victims of Hiroshima), composed for 52 strings in 1960 by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki, will be performed at the concert on 18 August 2019. Although written during the period when 'the avant-garde' dominated contemporary music, its soundscape is profoundly aleatoric and personal, evoking the terror of a previously inconceivable scale of  death, destruction and suffering resulting from the dropping of the first atomic bomb. A timely reminder given current political events. Penderecki, perhaps even subconsciously,  clearly utilized his own deep emotional turmoil experienced during the period of Nazi-occupied Poland. The appalling revelations of Auschwitz-Birkenau and other extermination camps abruptly disinherited the Western mind from its conception of civilized values. From the irrational turbulence of previously inconceivable horror, he created a work both autobiographical yet universal in its expression of unfathomable suffering. 

We then turned into the museum entrance for a moving, grueling tour of the result, both instant and long term, of the moment the Enola Gay B29 bomber unleashed a new consciousness of the nature of death upon humanity. It is a superbly laid out but appalling tour. In life a necessary one I felt, assuming one wants to learn the full nature of what it is to be human. However unrealistic idealism can be in our busy technologically dominated lives, one must, really must, reflect occasionally especially now on the irrationally destructive  as well as the creatively rational side of what it is to be a human being.  Such a visit is as inevitable to human understanding as as a tour of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in Poland and Treblinka not far from Warsaw where, in the truth of my own visit, 'no birds sing'.

However, the exhibit that moved me the most in this extraordinary museum was not the hugely impressive panoramic photograph of destruction, the dramatic animated installation of destruction caused by the dropping bomb, the video testimonies of survivors (although profoundly moving as some were), the geopolitical history, the design and science of the device, the photos of maimed and burnt bodies from the inferno, the shredded blood-stained dresses, melted bottles, the photographs of the laid waste landscape, the late developing cancers and keloid scars on once beautiful bodies, all were desperately moving. But for me the most affecting was a simple child's tricycle in a glass case. 

It belonged to Shinichi, or 'Shin' for short. The little boy had excitedly wanted a tricycle during the war. Obtaining one was more than difficult for his father than finding food but one day the little boy's dream came true and the tricycle appeared. 

He was playing happily in the garden on his little bike that fateful day when the first 'white-out' phase of the terrible explosion erupted, then came the heat and fires of hell. The house collapsed on top of him but he was pulled out of the rubble by his grandmother still tightly gripping the handlebars of the tricycle. His face was bleeding and swollen. Lying in his grandma's arms he pleaded for water. He mumbled 'The tricycle....my tricycle...'. She told him he was holding the handlebars. Did he give a weak smile? That night Shin died ten days before his fourth birthday.

Shin's tricycle

After a pleasant lunch and some deep reflections I attended the orchestral rehearsals for the coming concert with the conductor Christian Arming.

Christian Arming and the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra rehearsing the 7th Symphony of Beethoven 

My interview with the HSO General Manager, Mr. Kenji Igata, was very interesting concerning the history of the orchestra. The orchestra grew out of a military band in Kure City naval base. Surprisingly in 1918, musicians among the detained Germans taught the Japanese how to play western instruments and introduced some of them to Western music in a sort of cultural exchange. Beethoven became the favourite composer of the Japanese music lovers, especially the IXth Symphony. In no other country are there as any performances of this work as in Japan. There have been many hundreds of performances and some recordings. One performance with the conductor Yutaka Sado involved 10,000 singers in the choir! In December each year there is a particularly memorable concert that involves 4,000 choir members. Apparently anyone who wishes and is not tone deaf may sing!

Igata-san is from Nara Prefecture (奈良県 Nara-ken) a prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan. He worked his way up to his present position through dedication to his tasks, at one point he was scouted for his position as Director of the Kansai Philharmonic Orchestra. He believes his orchestra the HSO is developing well already, with overseas appointments and performances.These have included Vienna for the UN Peace concerts, in France at Rouen - Le Havre, South Korea and imminently in Warsaw in Poland in August 2019 with Martha Argerich and Nelson Freire as soloists possibly in the two Chopin piano concertos.

He had many interesting anecdotes to tell, one in particular I found interesting. The owner of the Mushika Cafe, a place popular with melomanes, was commissioned to buy food for the inhabitants of Hiroshima after WW II. He returned with classical music recordings rather than something to eat such was his dedication to music! Following the terrible conflagration of the war, the NHK (an acronym meaning Japan Broadcasting Corporation) required a professional orchestra which led to the formation of the Hiroshima Broadcasting Orchestra.

The first performance in 1963 as the Hiroshima Civic Symphony Orchestra was an all Beethoven programme: The Egmont Overture Op. 84, the Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major Op. 15 and the Symphony No. 5 in C minor Op. 67. In 1970 it became the HSO, a professional orchestra based in Hiroshima, the International City of Peace and Culture. In 1998 Akiyama Kazuyoshi, one of the best-known conductors in Japan, was appointed Principal Conductor and Musical Adviser. He was appointed Honorary Conductor for Life in April 2017. The orchestra received many awards among them the UNESCO 'Dialogue among Cultures ' medal.

As we spoke of orchestral plans for the future, he mentioned that in August 5th/6th 2020 there will be a premiere of a new piano concerto for two orchestras by the Japanese composer Dai Fujikura. Martha Argerich will perform this as the soloist with the Hiroshima Symphony orchestra.

The final appointment of the day was to what turned out to be a truly inspiring visit to the Ushita Junior High School. We (myself together with the renowned music critic Robert Markow from Montreal) were greeted with great courtesy and green tea, first by the headmistress Chiaki Minura and then by a small group pupils and English teachers.

Lt. to Rt. : Shoji Sato, Chiaki Minura, the headmistress of Ushita Junior High School, Robert Markow, Tomie Futakuchi, Michael Moran, Hiroshi Sakaibara

Each student then read a prepared address in English about their personal interests and the ideas behind of 'Music for Peace' and what it means for them.

If you would like to read these concise but excellent uplifting essays in English, hope for a peaceful future indeed from these talented young people.

https://app.box.com/s/ozr3olaigfyloevr2ohzq6twjnqcomh8

We were then shown a remarkably moving and emotional video entitled The Piano That Loved Chopin concerning a venerated object known as Akiko's Piano. It featured diary entries made by a young girl Akiko and interviews connected with those connected to the piano. At this point I would like to interpolate a programme note from the Japanese composer Dai Fujikura who today will 'touch this instrument' for the first time (clearly considered sacred in Hiroshima). When discovered, the unplayable piano was expertly restored by the 'Piano Doctor' Hiroshi Sakaibara

Akiko's Piano - Piano Concerto No.4 

This special piano concerto was written for the legendary pianist Martha Argerich. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY_mBJCaBWM

Then why it is called “Akiko’s Piano” ? Who is Akiko?

In Hiroshima, there is a piano which survived the atomic bomb, the smashed glass window from the blast is still stuck to the piano’s body. This piano belonged to a 19 year old girl, Akiko.

Akiko was born in LA to Japanese parents. There was a strong friendship, especially in LA, between the Americans and Japanese people before the Second World War.

Akiko got the piano when she was still in America, this piano is also American, a Baldwin, made in Cincinnati. When Akiko was 7, she and her parents moved to Japan, to live in Hiroshima.

She kept practicing the piano, having lessons, and when she was 19 year old, while she was working as a mobilized student, the atomic bomb was dropped. She walked and swam as the bridge had already been destroyed, to her home where her parents were that day. Then, the next day, she died in her parents’ arms. Her parents cremated their daughter’s body under a big persimmon tree which still exists today. Her last words were “Mom, I want to have a red tomato.”

Though naturally this concerto will have “music for peace” as its main message, as a composer I like to concentrate on the personal point of view. This microscopic view to tell the universal subject, is the way to go, I feel, in my compositions : the view of Akiko's, ordinary 19 year old girl who didn’t have any power over politics (and she was born in US, which means she was also an American) At the time of her death, she didn’t know what had happened, or what killed her (radiation poisoning, as she didn’t die from the initial blast).

There must be similar stories to that of this 19 year old girl in every war in history and in every country in the world. Every war will have had an “Akiko”.

I am using two pianos in this concerto, one is the main grand piano, then, the cadenza part of this concerto, perhaps at the end of the concerto, Akiko’s Piano, the piano that survived the atomic bomb will be used, played by the soloist.

To express such an universal theme of “music for peace”, the piece should portray that most personal, smallest point of view. I think that is the most powerful way, and only music can achieve this.

Dai Fujikura (edited by Alison Phillips)

Martha Argerich playing Akiko's Piano. The great Argentinian pianist and winner of the International Chopin Competition in 1965 appeared with the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra for 'An Evening of Peace Concert' on August 5, 2015. Two days later, she visited Chugoku Denryoku Hall and played Akiko’s piano.

“I think the piano loves to play Chopin, strangely enough. Apparently, the girl, Akiko, she used to love Chopin and play Chopin. Maybe the piano has the memory of this.”

HSO also performed the same peace program at Suntory Hall in Tokyo for the first time which was graced by the presence of Their Majesties the Emperor and Empress of Japan. She was subsequently appointed a Peace and Music Ambassador of the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra.

We were then invited to comment on this desperately moving video made by students themselves by their own broadcasting club. The renowned pianist Peter Serkin has made a fine CD that he quite spontaneously recorded when first encountering this 100 year old instrument. The sound is reminiscent of a Pleyel pianino of the nineteenth century but was manufactured by the American Baldwin company of Cincinnati.

The video can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exp6kluj070

I had already noticed the attractively designed, understated uniform of one of the male students. However the next video their club had made concerned the design of the female uniform and even an interview with the elderly lady who had designed it. More discussions followed before this most satisfying and optimistic day concluded among these promising young Japanese students.

Saturday 23rd February 2019 

Much of the morning was spent attending rehearsals for the concert and preparing my 'lecturette' for the afternoon.

The musically gifted pianist Makoto Ozone (piano) and the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra under Christian Arming rehearsing the Shostakovitch Piano Concerto No. 1 in C minor

There was then to be an afternoon session for around 100 students, members of the public and Hiroshima academia. The afternoon for me began around 4.00 pm with the setting up of my equipment for my small talk entitled 'Music for Peace : Hiroshima – Warsaw - Chopin. A Glorious Rebirth after Catastrophe' 

Michael Moran giving his illustrated talk
'Music for Peace : Hiroshima – Warsaw - Chopin. A Glorious Rebirth after Catastrophe'

The relationship between Poland and Japan is not a subject that is often considered. The 100th anniversary of Polish-Japanese relations is in 2020 and also the arrival in Tokyo of the Polish Olympic Team. I aimed to clarify a few things and examine the similarities of intention - honour, nobility and courage in deciding to rebuild the two ruined cities. I played piano music of Chopin behind the presentation performed by Daniil Trifonov, Ignaz Friedman, Aikio Ebi, Peter Serkin and Hiroko Nakamura. 

The session opened with a delightful and high quality, elegant and charming  performance of  the first movement of Mozart's popular  Eine kleine Nachtmusik as originally composed for chamber ensemble. In this case the ensemble was made up of both Polish members of the Sinfonia Varsovia including the optional double bass, both members of the visiting Orchestra de Paris, and viola and cello from the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra.

We then had an extraordinary and quite entertaining performance by music students who had formed a euphonium and tuba quintet.

Then some small works arranged for clarinet trio

This was followed by my 12 minute translated talk (translated by a most sympathetic and patient young lady). I think it was received well. There was also a talk comparing Japanese orchestras and his experience of them by my colleague Robert Markow.

The day concluded with a panel discussion led by Mari Katayangi, Vice Director of the Centre for Peace at Hiroshima University.  There were many interesting remarks which I would wish to remember. 

Nadia Médiouni, a violinist from the Orchestra de Paris, is also a member of  East-West Divan Orchestra founded by the renowned Israeli pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim and the Palestinian author and intellectual Edward Said. Barenboim said: 

The Divan was conceived as a project against ignorance. A project against the fact that it is absolutely essential for people to get to know the other, to understand what the other thinks and feels, without necessarily agreeing with it. 

Nadia so wisely said: We are all equal in music. We may be all different but with music we are all the same. In an orchestra we are forced to listen to the others and it should be the same in life.

Jyunko Goto, a violinist from the HSO, reminded us of the Peace Concert that occurs annually on August 6th the day of the tragedy. Music purifies the mind.

Another gentleman, a student of the University, made a penetrating remark for me : Art is a gesture of empathy and song sends a message of truth. 

Hiroshima University runs various courses to promote peace and to understand the nature of peace negotiations as well as many other associated topics. We must at the very least maintain the belief, have faith in the power of music to civilize even if...

Sunday 24th February 2019 

The main event of today was of course the concert. However there was a small pre-concert event that was a beautiful symbolic example of East meets West inherent in the nature of the instruments chosen, the Japanese traditional instrument known as the Koto and the Western cello familiar to us all. Some moving traditional Japanese songs had been arranged for both instruments and the harmony of instrumental timbre and idealistic intention was more than a little moving in terms of the 'Music for Peace' project intention of cross-cultural understanding and co-operation through music.

Martin Stanzeleit (principal cello HSO) and Mitsuhara Hiroki (Koto) before an enraptured audience

Mitsuhara Hiroki (Koto) 

What a remarkable three days this has been. For Hiroshima to literally rise like a phoenix from the ashes to become a modern prosperous city is nothing short of a miracle of national spirit. A true inspiration. This music event is a small move forward surely in the realization of the dream that is the 'Music for Peace' project. Symbolically set in the tragic city of Hiroshima, I hope this idea will have a positive impact in convincing people even further, despite the unsettling equivocal nature of man, that war is an irrational, destructive, murderous and unacceptable way of resolving conflict.

'Music for Peace' is an important humanist and musical celebration of the valiant national inspiration that rebuilt the great cities of Hiroshima and Warsaw after a catastrophic war. We must never forget these sacrifices especially now as world nuclear tensions increase. Hopefully the 'Music for Peace' project and a mutual love of the music of Fryderyk Chopin will add particularly significant symbolism to the 100th anniversary of the establishment of relations between Japan and Poland to be celebrated in 2020.