Misato Mochizuki was born in Tokyo in 1969. By the age of 13 she was premièring her own compositions for piano and orchestra in Japan and the US under the direction of Rostropovich. She has lived in Paris since 1992, studying at the Conservatoire. She spent a year on the Composition and Computer Music programme at IRCAM and her awards include a fellowship at Darmstadt.

With that CV you will not be surprised that her music is located firmly in the realm of genuine Modernism. That doesn’t, of course, preclude her from drawing on non-musical ideas: All that is, for example, was inspired by the spiritual experiences of American astronauts, yet, as is her custom, Mochizuki builds the piece on a strict system: each instrument (bass flute, clarinet, violin) is given its own velocity and tempo to create a ‘complex rotation system’ evoking the relationship between Moon, Earth and Sun.

Her work has excited much favourable comment at various European festivals over the past few years, and this album brings together some of her most highly praised pieces in incisive performances by the contemporary music co-operative Klangforum Wien. Mochizuki requires the listener to meet her at least halfway, and while much of her inspiration is rooted in the natural world (Si Bleu, for another example, deals with the cycle of water and air) it is the processes that matter: like many of her Darmstadt predecessors, she focuses on the structural and molecular level, so don’t expect anything very pastoral. It is not easy music, but it repays the work the listener puts in.