*2023 stock* "The four tracks on this album are piano pieces I composed between 2007 and 2018, performed by pianist Satoko Inoue. A live recording of a 2018 solo recital by Inoue-san has been newly mastered for this release. The three tracks other than "Containing Time" are pieces I composed for Inoue-san. Around 2007, when I wrote "Cosmetic Dance," I often went to her concerts, as I liked the way she played. One day soon after I'd finished the composition, I went to hear her perform. After the concert, the composer Masamichi Kinoshita introduced me to Inoue-san and I handed her the just-completed score. This occasion led eventually to my writing "Clouds Merging into the Sea, Islands Floating in the Sky 2" and "View from the Round Window 2," and Inoue-san giving their premieres and repeat performances in Japan and other countries.

The composition methods for the four pieces varied--actually, they were quite different from one another. For instance, I used dice in composing "Cosmetic Dance," and for "Clouds Merging into the Sea, Islands Floating in the Sky 2" I took the piano part of an ensemble piece and rewrote it as a solo work. In "Containing Time" I applied an inverted metrical structure, while in "View from the Round Window 2" I made conscious use of pedaling and rests. At the foundation of these diverse compositional techniques, however, is a consistent and unchanging interest in the moment when sound vanishes. To capture this moment, I've committed myself to intentionally taking a multi-angled approach using different methods when composing works for piano. I listen to the moment when sound is vanishing even more closely than to the moment when sound is born. In the moment of vanishing, there's an instant when sound emerges. Sometimes it vanishes literally "instantly," and sometimes I feel that an instant contains an enormously long period of time. In some cases I don't feel the flow of time at all. In each work, the accumulation of these instants becomes the piece's characteristic time and a sort of closed world. If gathering and arranging four closed "times" in one CD results in a landscape that expands out from between these closed worlds, then I'll be quite happy." - Yuka Shibuya