Aria Piano Collection | Takeshi Senoo, Mina Kubota

I actually received this a few days ago but of-course had to have a good listen before writing about it.

Takeshi Senoo would be the same fellow that appears in the ‘Choro Club feat. Senoo’ as the creators of the Aria soundtracks. He is the pianist and co-writer of the music as Choro Club doesn’t have one.
Mina Kubota wrote all four of the themes that Yui Makino and Round Table feat. Nino sing for both series, and she performs the four pieces in solo piano versions on this CD.
It also features six short tracks of dialogue by four of the seiyuu (voice actors) of the series playing in character; an introduction, a comment on each of the four seasons, and an End Chapter, interspersed between the music.

The music itself is amazing. The piano versions of the themes are brilliant and make pieces that were already warm even warmer. As for the other tracks, Senoo-san really gets to show his class with some of the most delicate and intimate compositions, most of which are slight variations of pieces that appear on the other two main soundtracks for the first and second season.

Both pianists’ performances are brilliant, also a further exhibition of the wonderful grace that Japanese musicians often have when playing piano versions of pop, instrumental and orchestral pieces as any fan of the Final Fantasy Piano Collections know.

I absolutely adore Choro Club’s music and the titles themes for Aria, and the Piano Collection adds a fantastic warmth to an already well-rounded canon of music.