Janáček’s Sinfonietta Record

Janáček’s Sinfonietta Record is the lone recording Aomamé can find near Jiyugaoka, and her attempt to replay it turns a remembered sound into a test of reality. The melody is unmistakably the one heard in the taxi, yet listening at home produces none of the bodily disturbance or altered perception associated with that earlier encounter. The record confirms the memory while failing to restore its effect.

Finding and Playing the Record

Aomamé goes to a record shop near Jiyugaoka station in search of Janáček’s Sinfonietta. Janáček is not especially popular, and the shop has few of his records; only one contains the Sinfonietta. It is conducted by George Szell with the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, and the other side holds Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. Unsure of the performance but without another option, she buys the LP.

At home, she takes a bottle of Chablis from the refrigerator, opens it, sets the record on the turntable, and lowers the needle. The opening fanfare sounds as it did in the taxi. She is certain she has found the same symphony: the record gives her a concrete point of comparison between her memory and the world she now inhabits.

A Match Without the Earlier Effect

Aomamé closes her eyes and concentrates. She judges the interpretation not bad, but nothing unusual follows. The music plays without twisting her body or changing her perceptions. Hearing the same composition does not repeat the experience that first made it significant.

She listens to the end, returns the record to its sleeve, and sits on the floor with her wine, leaning against the wall. Drinking alone and absorbed in thought, she finds no taste in it. The carefully repeated listening thus yields both confirmation and absence: the sound is the same, but its former force cannot be summoned.

The Record’s Place in Aomamé’s Search

The record functions as evidence, not an explanation. Its opening fanfare verifies the taxi music, but the failed repetition leaves unresolved whether Aomamé herself has changed or the world has. The object can preserve and reproduce a sound; it cannot certify that the circumstances surrounding that sound remain intact. Its ordinary mechanical reliability sharpens, rather than settles, her uncertainty.