YEREVAN/NAGANO, Japan — Japanese pianist Takahiro Akiba (born 1984 in Yokohama) is one of Japan’s leading interpreters of Armenian and Russian classical music. He graduated at the top of his class from the Piano Department of the Tokyo University of the Arts (TUA), later earning a Doctor of Musical Arts degree with research devoted to the great Russian pianist-composer Samuil Evgenievich Feinberg. He also studied at the Moscow P. I. Tchaikovsky Conservatory under Prof. Mikhail Olenev and received additional guidance from Victor Bunin and from Anahit Nersesyan. In 2013, Akiba won First Prize at the Second Komitas International Music Competition in Germany, and in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the promotion of Armenian music he received honors from the former Ministry of Diaspora of Republic of Armenia in 2015 and the Armenian Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports’ Gold Medal in 2021.
Deeply committed to Armenian culture, Akiba founded the Armenian Music Society of Japan named after Komitas (often referred to as the Komitas Society Japan or the Komitas Center in Tokyo), through which he has organized concerts, educational programs, and cultural exchanges dedicated to the music of Komitas and other Armenian composers deeply influenced by Komitas’ creative heritages. He has performed extensively in Japan, Armenia, Russia, and Europe, and has collaborated with many internationally renowned musicians, including Arax Mansourian (soprano), Karen Shakhgaldyan (violin), Komitas Quartet and etc. Alongside his concert career, he is an active educator and currently serves as Associate Professor of Piano Course at Aichi University of the Arts (AUArts). Akiba’s official website is: www.takahiroakiba.com.
Dear Takahiro-san, I imagine you are often asked this question: Why Komitas?
Komitas is the person who brought the pure identity of the Armenian nation into sharp relief through music. It’s not an easy task — even on a global view — to find a musician who, with such deeply diligent and extremely pure devotion, purified the great energy nurtured by the spiritual life of his compatriots of all eras, transcribed it into notes of mysterious impact, and converted it into audible sound (despite the existence of a few superficially similar examples in the world music history…). Komitas carefully cleared away the dense, tangled multiethnic mixture that had overgrown the landscape of Armenian music prior to his time, and cultivated his musical homeland through the power of music, which cannot be invaded by anything or anyone. As one of the inhabitants of this world ruled by the chaos of wars and invasion, I find the salvation within this sense of inner harmony for the human identity — absolutely inviolable — that Komitas has constructed.
For more than a decade, you have been introducing Komitas’s music to audiences around the world. How would you characterize his music — and Armenian music in general? Is it closer to Eastern Europe, Western Asia, somewhere in between, or does it transcend such geographical and cultural classifications, much like the Armenian alphabet?
The musical heritages of Komitas are like fresh fruits that have not yet been plucked from the tree. From giants of Armenian music history such as Aram Khachaturian, Arno Babajanyan, Alexander Arutiunyan and Tigran Mansurian to the other brilliant contemporary musicians have truly benefited from the “Fruits of Komitas’s tree,” discovering their own unique musical languages rooted in that spiritual fruits.
