Yuko Inoue - The Art of Emotions (2019)

"The Art of Emotions" is Yuko Inoue's debut album. The sound of the fortepiano draws us back 200 years to a time when composers developed a new musical language in parallel with the evolution of the instruments.

Harpsichordist and forte-pianist Yuko Inoue's career took an unexpected turn when she came across the music of C.P.E. Bach. For the first time in her life she heard music that was extremely close to her own temperament, so close that she has jokingly suggested that she herself must have been C.P.E. Bach in a past life. The music of C.P.E. Bach therefore provides a fitting starting point for this album.

The three major figures to emerge from this period all have a relation to the second of Bach's sons. Haydn was a big fan throughout his life and studied his scores thoroughly. The Mozart Prelude and Fugue on this album is a little a-typical of the composer. In a letter he writes that Constanze was eager for him to write some music in Bach style. When Beethoven issued the variations of Op. 35, he insisted that he had made use of a whole new style of composition. The motif from Prometheus is made use of elsewhere also, famously in his third symphony.

Based in Cologne, Yuko Inoue enjoys a remarkably broad-span career. After her Bachelor graduation at the Music College of Tokyo and being laureate at several piano and chamber music competitions during this period, she took up a keen interest in historical keyboard instruments and graduated with a Master of Music in harpsichord. Alongside her performing studies, she also followed musicological threads in a special curriculum about the Fantasia style in C.P.E. Bach's composition. After her debut recital in 2004, Ms Inoue has established her place in the music life, with numerous appearances as harpsichordist and forte-pianist, both in solo and chamber music - in Japan as well as in Europe, i.e., with the Klassische Philharmonie Bonn, Kölner Kammerorchester, Sinfonieorchester Aachen, The Norwegian Baroque Orchestra and at the Utrecht Festival voor Oude Muziek.