DGFischer

I was surprised that I was making immediate comparisons between Forest of Piano and Your Lie in April.  Okay, there was all that piano music, virtuosi dripping all over.  But ... where was the romance?  Where was the stunningly beautiful although highly eccentric violinist?  But sorry, the Toilet Princess Takako is a case of close but no cigar.  You'll have to find something else to fall in love with ... like great music.

Think of Forest of Piano as a story of two families from the opposite sides of the tracks.  The Amamiya clan, wealthy and influential, with all the privileges of a musically gifted family.  Shuhei is their boy who can command the ivories.  Then we have the Ichinoses, Reiko and her son Kai.  Living in the impoverished red light district, Reiko can only give her son the life of the sordid and seedy.  But an uncanny break for Kai.  A concert piano, once the prized possession of a ruined master pianist, is abandoned in the stretch of forest where Kai's house stood.  Kai immediately took to playing of the 'piano of the forest.'  Unlimited talent is untapped, and the ruined master Ajino has a chance to build the piano virtuoso he was bound to have been save for some tragedy which occurred at the height of his triumphant.  But Kai, obviously brilliant in interpretation over against mechanical replication of sheet music, is disregarded in junior competition.  Kai and Shuhei, warm friends in youth, now become rivals.  And their paths both lead to the Chopin International Competition in Poland.

Two strengths in Forest of Piano.  Of course, the top notch musical selections featuring the Chopin Etudes as well as Mozart, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff ... the good stuff.  But the work of the CGI portions, featuring the hands coursing along the keyboard.  Extremely realistic and accurate.  The weaknesses are in plot.  The development of the diversities in Kai and Shuhei's backgrounds are obvious and overplayed.  Kai's opportunities to play piano as he becomes Ajino's pupil in cabaret and street corner as Shuhei studies overseas.  Unimaginative treatment of the main characters.

But the music drives the story more than the interplay of the personalities.  And the Chopin Competition reveals the characters from flamboyant to conceited to anxious to calm, cool and collected.  But the tensions of performance yields to the composure of the pure sounds of exquisitely played melodies.  It what the ears want to hear.  And this is more than enough to atone for a forced plot line.

Season two of Forest of Piano will offer more as the Chopin Competition continues with the strained, almost political judgment calls of the authorities who claim to know what quality is ... rather than that understanding that anyone with a sense what is beautiful can easily comprehend.  Judges with axes to grind ... not what the arts need.