"If All Things Were to Be Forgotten" - A Fantasia Collection for Minipiano -

A collection of works by Mamiko Hirai performed on a 1933 mini piano.
The music was created while traveling to different places with the instrument and was recorded in the artist's private room at home, where the songs of her pet birds naturally blend into the sound. The intimate tones carry a quiet resonance, forming a precious record where music and everyday life gently overlap.

==

I am writing these words with a pen different from the one I usually hold.
It was in August 2022 that I encountered, or perhaps re-encountered, this mini-piano, a small, fully acoustic piano built in 1933.

Restored by Hitomi Ogawa of PIANOPIA, its sound carried an indescribable sense of nostalgia, as if the time I had lived until then had quietly folded back upon itself.
I felt a strange sensation, as though I were being gently drawn into another time.

From that day on, I began to travel with this small piano.
Though called "mini," it still weighs nearly forty kilograms; even so, compared to a full-sized piano, it is remarkably easy to carry.
Together, we traveled to friends' homes and ateliers, to familiar shops and galleries, and to places steeped in time, such as Hakua-so in Kyoto and the annex hall of the Kyoto Museum of Culture, an Important Cultural Property built more than a century ago.
Traveling with a piano.
For someone who had spent her life playing grand and upright pianos, this felt like a dream.
As I move through different places, I am also traveling through myself. I am returning to a time when I was not yet who I am now, a time I once shared with this mini piano.
Perhaps this is why I chose to call it a re-encounter. By touching this piano once again, I may be reaching into distant memories that lie deep within me. There is a sense of freshness and quiet reassurance, like lying down in a vast open meadow. I become a small bird, stepping lightly across the keys. I become a chrysalis, sinking into silence. My fingers climb and descend like stairways, overlapping with scenes from long ago, then drifting apart once more. Crossing nearly a hundred years of time, the instrument responds to the space around it, as if the stars scattered across the night sky were softly conversing with one another. One day, just as on that day long ago, the time will come when I part from this mini piano. And somewhere far in the future, we may meet again. For now, I am spending this fleeting and irreplaceable moment with this instrument.

I am writing these words with a pen different from the one I usually hold. In other words, the one weaving these letters is both the me from a distant past and the me who will one day live in a future yet to come. Even if all of this were nothing more than an illusion, I would not mind.
"If All Things Were to Be Forgotten"
- A Fantasia Collection for Minipiano -
This piece is my treasure.
It is a record of eternal memories, written from the heart of this very moment.

==

Mamiko Hirai
"f All Things Were to Be Forgotten"
- A Fantasia Collection for Minipiano -

Instruments:
Minipiano / 40 keys, K.Kawai, 1933
Birdsong:Matinee.Journée,Soiree
Recorded and Mixed by:
Katsunori Fukuoka (Flysound Co.)
Minipiano Restoration and Tuning:
Hitomi Ogawa (PIANOPIA)
Recording Date:
July 14, 2024
Recording Location:
My room in Tokyo
Release Date: March 13, 2026

Design:
Hideyuki Saito
Translation:
Alisa Evans
Production:
Tatsuya Shimada (night cruising)