Akio Yashiro, a close friend of the famous writer Yukio Mishima and the composer Toshiro Mayuzumi, was born in 1929 in Tokyo, where he studied, before a period at the Paris Conservatoire under Nadia Boulanger and Olivier Messiaen. He returned to Tokyo in 1956, later teaching at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, where he had himself studied. He died in 1976, leaving a relatively small number of completed compositions, all of which show perfection and sophistication. His Symphony of 1958 and later Piano Concerto are both written in cyclic form. The former has a first movement originally inspired by Oscar Wilde’s Salomé, and a second that suggests Messiaen in its melodic material. The Scherzo and Finale quote Japanese festival music and material derived from Noh plays. The first movement of the Piano Concerto is oriental in feeling, with a central movement dominated by a repeated ostinato and a Finale that suggests toccatas in the style of Prokofiev and Bartók.