City PhD student Ikuko Inoguchi, who is currently in the third year of her doctoral programme, supervised by Ian Pace, gave a lecture-recital at Schott’s for the Institute of Musical Research on November 15th, 2013, relating to her research into the music of Toru Takemitsu and its performance. In the Takemitsu Society Newsletter, renowned Takemitsu scholar Peter Burt wrote about:

‘.. her [Izoguchi’s] admirable professional cool as she launched into her presentation on ‘Performing Tōru Takemitsu’s Rain Tree Sketch: a sense of time, a sense of space, and a sensitivity to colour and tone’. As the title suggests, her presentation viewed the work in part from a performer’s perspective – a perspective to which she showed herself fully entitled, immediately sitting down at the piano and demonstrating her total command of the piece’s technical and expressive challenges. Performers’ preoccupations were also to the fore in the detailed analysis which followed, which included the fruits of some pioneering research into the variant metronome markings of the various editions. Yet there was plenty to interest the non-specialist here too, not least in the shape of some fascinating speculations on the Japanese sense of time. All in all, like the other contributions, it provided plenty of fuel for discussion in the ensuing question period and, more informally, over wine afterwards – and an encouraging sign of the Society’s rebirth after that long period of hibernation.’