Yoshimatsu had long been inspired by Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, and in particular its ‘fate’ motif. However, he concedes that the work has more of an affinity with its other great influence: the story of Faust. The symphony takes up the human drama of Faust as an orchestral ‘play in four acts’, in which three characters – ‘the ego questioning itself about what it is (man)’, ‘the devil (or fate)’, and ‘an angel-like entity (woman)’ – and their crossing relationships are realised in music that entangles them with the vast dimensions of time, past and future.The work was completed in the summer of 2001 and dedicated to the composer’s father, Masataka.

The Prelude to the Celebration of Birds follows Age of the Birds and Ode to Birds and Rainbow in a series of works for orchestra on the theme of birds. The work was commissioned by the Sinsei Symphony Orchestra and composed between spring and late autumn 2000 as a ‘prelude to celebrate the arrival of the twenty-first century’. It is a modest commemorative work, combining a fanfare for the new age with a faint, passing nostalgia for that which now is past.

The Atom Hearts Club Suites are a series of works based on the concept of a ‘Seventies Rock Ensemble’. The peculiar title was distilled from Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles, Atom Heart Mother by Pink Floyd, the originator of progressive rock and Mighty Atom by Osamu Tezuka. This second suite, in six movements, was originally written for twelve cellos but was later arranged for string orchestra.