Maestro Michiyoshi Inoue has announced that he would retire from his profession as of December 2024. With us, our 661st Subscription Concert would be our last concert with Maestro. The following is his message:
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My collaboration with the Sapporo Symphony Orchestra; I recall it was the time when Peter Schwarz was the principal conductor and Hiroyuki Iwaki was the resident conductor, making a huge success by conducting outdoor concert in Hokkaido Governmental Ground. Venues at that time were Hokkaido Koseinennkin Kaikan, 2,300 capacity, or Sapporo Shimin Kaikan, the old hall even at that time. Orchestra members who were assuming a role as a leader were those who spent years at Japan Philharmonic or NHK Symphony Orchestra. When I arrived at the Chitose Airport, Mr. Taniguchi, General Manager with an outstanding personality welcomed me and said, “Thank you for coming such a long way,” the manager who were still young that time, but very polite and had taken good care of conductors.
My personal memory with Sapporo; I have been here once with my family to experience ski. That was when I was the first grade of my Junior High School (1958). On the way back from skiing ground- I still remember a taxi driver pulled my skiing poles from Maruyama to downtown hotel. Thus, for me, Sapporo left the image more like a place of fairy tale. These memories come back to me like a fragrance when I turn pages of the program books. When Hokkaido were still at its booming economy, there were many people enjoying HOKUDEN concerts or outdoor concerts in summer. I have been in a commercial video for Hotel Apex Toya.
Time passed and my fellow friend Tadaaki Otaka had been the Music Director of the orchestra for so many years; but he and I are both getting at the age of malfunction, slightly. It has been some time for the orchestra to have one conductor for certain number of years as the director. But if Sapporo Symphony Orchestra aims to gain its personality, we need to love the city and orchestra, those who are related deep with the orchestra, those who live, politicians and media people must have a target of long term, wide view. Sapporo is not only the skiing ground.
Mr. Taniguchi said, “When I was a child, I needed to go a long corridor which looks out to the Clock Tower to reach the toilet. It was far, and so I used to urinate from the corridor.“ We need such a person!
Michiyoshi Inoue