This work consists of 3 small pieces such as ‘Night Rhapsody’, ‘Cherry blossom’ and ‘March of spring’. These pieces were at the beginning composed independently, and later Mitsukuri reconstructed them as one suite in later years. It is published as “Three Piano Pieces Associated with Flowers”.
The first piece of the suite ‘Night Rhapsody’ was composed looking back on the flower of Peony which bloomed profusely at the night festival in Kanda Shrine in Tokyo. Legato triplets in the piece sing comfortably. This piece is included in ‘Tcherepnin Collection”, a collection of music scores published by A. Tcherepnin who was a pianist and composer. The second piece of the suite is written in sonata form which has one main subject: a famous Japanese old song. According to the composer, the third piece of the suite was written by ‘Miyako-bushi’ scale ( Japanese traditional scale). The piece includes inversion and retrograde of the theme.
Shūkichi Mitsukuri published some discussions about ‘Japanese harmony’ from 1930s, and “Three Piano Pieces Associated with Flowers” reflects his arguments in practice. As well as his ideas about ‘Japanese harmony’, Mitsukuri was aware that he was affected by French Impressionists. Mitsukuri was eager to accept western music and open up the compositional field as a Japanese.
“Three Piano Pieces Associated with Flowers” has an important position in the Mitsukuri’s works, in terms of both his compositional technique used to this piece and the fact that these three pieces in the suite were each used in his later orchestral works.