Akiko’s Baldwin Piano: From Cincinnati to Hiroshima and Back Again

When we encounter an instrument on stage, we rarely think about its biography. Yet some instruments carry scars and associations that demand recognition. On September 29, Borrowed Landscape brings one such instrument’s story into dialogue with Cincinnati’s own musical past.

A Baldwin Piano, Built in Cincinnati

Akiko Kawamoto (1926-1945) was a young woman from Hiroshima who loved music. She is at the heart of Borrowed Landscape not through her surviving testimony – she perished at nineteen after the atomic bombing – but through the instrument she played. Her upright piano was a Baldwin, manufactured here in Cincinnati in the early twentieth century. Baldwin was not only a local industry but also an emblem of our city’s role in shaping American musical life. Instruments built here circulated across the United States and abroad; Akiko’s family purchased theirs while living in Los Angeles and later carried it back across the Pacific. That journey alone maps an unexpected connection between Cincinnati craftsmanship and Japanese domestic music-making in the 1930s.

Hiroshima, 1945

When the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima, the Kawamoto home collapsed. The piano was badly damaged, its side splintered by glass and the blast, and Akiko herself died from radiation exposure the day after the bombing. For decades the piano remained silent in storage, but in the early 2000s it was restored by piano technician Michiko Ishikawa, who recognized its significance and worked carefully to return it to playable condition without erasing its scars. Since then, this special instrument has been performed on by some of the world’s greatest pianists (such as Martha Argerich and Peter Serkin), and it has been curated in traveling exhibitions. It is not simply a piano, but an artifact that testifies both to human survival and to the memories of those who did not survive.

Michiko Ishikawa works on Akiko’s piano.

Instruments as Historical Actors

Akiko’s piano demonstrates that instruments are not neutral conduits of sound. They are shaped by place, by makers, by those who play them, and by the circumstances that mark their histories. They, in turn, shape the meaning of a performance. Here, Cincinnati’s industrial history becomes entangled with Hiroshima’s devastation; a locally built object becomes part of a global story of trauma and remembrance.

Borrowed Landscape and the Legacy of Tauchgold

The performance you will hear on September 29 is not simply a concert but a narratorio (part play, part oratorio) created by German playwright duo Tauchgold in collaboration with composer Dai Fujikura. Their works have long explored the intersections of music and history, with special compositions always at the center, and Borrowed Landscape does just that, telling the story of three instruments that survived WWII and the people who once played them.

Tragically, Borrowed Landscape was among the last projects created together by the couple Heike Tauch and Florian Goldberg. In 2024, shortly after completing their narratorio Nobody’s Nothings, Tauch died of cancer. Goldberg now continues the Tauchgold name, carrying forward both their artistic partnership and their commitment to works that interweave memory and survival. This performance, then, is doubly charged: it not only brings to life the story of Akiko and her piano but also honors the creative legacy of a partnership shaped by the remembrance of love and loss.

For those who value not only music but also the contexts that give it greater resonance, Borrowed Landscape offers a rare opportunity. It is a chance to reflect on how Cincinnati’s own classical music history intersects with the memories of individuals across time and across the globe.

We invite you to join us on September 29 at the Mercantile Library.

Tickets: https://www.concertnova.com/concerts-events/borrowed-landscape