Maurice Journeau: A presentation of his French music to Japanese pianists

The Japanese musical review "Afternoon Music" n°91 (March 2023) includes a long interview with a Japanese title we could rather translate into English as "A talk with Chantal Virlet about Maurice Journeau, a father she deeply knew". This press article by Mrs Hiroko Yasuda is owed to her recent, unexpected discovery of the French composer Maurice Journeau (1898-1999) when listening by chance to a CD of some of his numerous piano works. Mrs. Hiroko Yasuda, a Japanese piano player and professor teaching in Montreal, deeply specialized in the musical work of the American composer William Gillock, is the founding president of the William Gillock Association in Japan. She is now interested in this 20th-century French deceased composer, still unknown by her and very close to her natural musical liking, just as William Gillock before. That is the mere reason of Journeau's daughter participated to this interview covering five accurate pages, including also the German pianist Thomas Betz and the French piano-violin duet of Cathy Cousin and François Goïc, who have performed and recorded numerous Journeau's works.

A vivid example of music as a universal language, if it deeply speaks to human hearts, and of so kind a Japanese musical love of a French 20th Century music.