This exhibition was originally shown at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and has toured to Finland and Korea. The roughly 30 works on show include Casino, for which Annette Messager (b. 1943) won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2005.

The show features the French artist's repertoire of forms and materials (plush, stuffed animals, fabric, wool, photographs, drawings…) which 'blend the registers', and play with our sensations and emotions with a certain virtuosity. Keeping her work based firmly in everyday life, Messager explores the various dichotomies and contradictions inherent in the human condition: religion and secularity, humor and fear, love and pain, woman and man, animal and human, childhood and adulthood, life and death, surface and substance.

Mori Art Museum
Roppongi Hills Mori Tower
6-10-1 Roppongi
Minato-Ku Tokyo 106-6150

J.S.Bach: Cantatas from Leipzig 1726:

"Wir müssen durch viel Trübsal" BWV146;
"Gott fähret auf mit Jauchzen" BWV43;
"Siehe, ich will viel Fischer aussenden" BWV88

Masaaki Suzuki, conductor
Rachel Nichols, soprano
Robin Blaze, countertenor
Gerd Türk, tenor
Peter Kooij, bass
Masato Suzuki, organ obbligato
Bach Collegium Japan (Chorus & Orchestra)

Riccardo Muti leads the Vienna Philharmonic for its annual visit to Japan with an eclectic programme including two works by Italian composer Nino Rota.

Visitors to Tokyo should note that in view of the Japanese enthusiasm for the Viennese orchestra, ticket sales are always brisk.

16 September 2008

Haydn: Symphony No.67 in F major, Hob.I:67
Bruckner: Symphony No.2 in C minor

18 September 2008

Verdi: Overture, Giovanna d'Arco
Verdi: Ballet 'Le Quatro Stagioni', I vespri siciliani
Nino Rota: Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra
Nino Rota: Film Score Il Gattopardo Excerpts

Ian Bousfield, Trombone

23 September 2008

Rossini: Overture, Semiramide
Stravinsky: From Ballet Le baiser de la fée
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No.5 in E minor, op.64