Takemitsu: Garden Rain [Import]

Toru Takemitsu (Composer), Hiroshi Wakasugi (Conductor), Jurg Wittenbacher (Conductor), Akiyoshi Kudo (Performer), Tadao Takahashi (Performer), Basel Ensemble (Performer), Aurele Nicolet (Performer), Kiyoshi Shomura (Performer), Ursula Holliger (Performer), Heinz Holliger (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Akiyoshi Kudo, Tadao Takahashi, Basel Ensemble, Aurele Nicolet, Kiyoshi Shomura, et al.
• Conductor: Hiroshi Wakasugi, Jurg Wittenbacher
• Composer: Toru Takemitsu
• Audio CD (February 8, 2005)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Deutsche Grammophon
• ASIN: B0006VXF3C
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #117,820 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A welcome reissue of some early and middle-period works in historical performances, December 3, 2006

By 

Christopher Culver - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Takemitsu: Garden Rain (Audio CD)

This collection of pieces by Takemitsu comes in Deutsche Grammaphon's "Echo 20/21" series of reissues of contemporary music. It's the first international release on CD, we should rejoice that these historical performances of music from several eras of Takemitsu's work are finally available once more.

Two works are fairly early. The earliest material here is "Le Son calligraphie" (1958/60), three pieces for strings written while Takemitsu was still looking to Messiaen and Webern for inspiration. Their soundworld is quite reminiscent of the "Requiem" for strings dating from the same era, Takemitsu's first big hit. The work is performed by an ensemble of Japanese players conducted by Hiroshi Wakasugi. "Hika | Elegy" for violin and piano (1966), performed here by Ida Kavafian and Peter Serkin, takes much of its musical material from the third movement of Takemitsu's early piano piece "Uninterrupted rests". That movement was titled "A song of love", and this duet is certainly one of the most passionate violin and piano pairings in modern repertoire.

Several works here date from the height of Takemitsu's modernist period around the turn of the 70s. In "Eucalypts I & II" (1970) the first piece is for flute, oboe, harp, and strings, while the second is for flute, oboe, and harp. The music is defined by the seeming separate activities of the performers, but unlike the Western contrast of sonata-allegreo form, Takemitsu seeks to show all parts organically growing from the same origin in spite of their independent existence. Jurg Wittenbacher conducts the Basel Ensemble, and the soloists here appear in several works from the same period.

"Voice" for solo flute (1971) was written for Aurele Nicolet, who performs here. What sets the work apart is Takemitsu's having the performer shout, sing, and hum into the instrument, amplifying and treating his voice. The opening, with some bold words by Japanese poet Shuzo Takiguchi, will snap you out of any trance entered from the other works. At times it sounds like flute-meets-Ligeti's "Aventures", and so comes across as rather dated, but all in all it's an innovative effort. The work has also been recorded on Naxos in performance by Robert Aiken. Nicolet gives a rougher and more primal go at it, while Aiken's is more polished.

"Stanza II" for harp and tape (1971) is a sort of sequel to a rather zany piece for small ensemble and mezzo-soprano which Takemitsu had composed a few years previously. If that first piece was oddly reminiscent of Boulez's "Pli selon pli" with its supple rhythms and soprano role, this second one foreshadows the French composer's "Repons" with its glittery metallic colours. Still, the use of bird song and the snippets of conservation briefly heard on the tape keeps it rooted in personal experience and away from total abstraction. Ursula Holliger performs on harp. "Distance" for oboe and sho (1972) features one of the most striking features of Takemitsu's modernism, the pairing of Western instruments with traditional Japanese instruments. The sho remains constantly in the backgroup, while the oboe darts here and there. The oboe soloist is Heinz Holliger, while Tadamaro Ono performs on sho.

I'm hestitant to comment on the three "Folios" for guitar (1974), since solo guitar music is the only modern-classical repertoire I really don't get. The next piece, however, is probably the best on the disc. "Garden Rain" for brass ensemble (1974) was written after Takemitsu read a poem by an Australian schoolgirl with the lines "Hours are the leaves of life. And I am their gardener. Each hour falls down slow." In thinking about the connection between tone colour and time, he has the instrumentalists play each note as slowly and softly as possible. The result is lovely, and if you like Takemitsu's "Signals from Heaven" brass fanfares, you'll enjoy this one as well.

The liner notes here are fairly uninformative. Fans of the composer would do well to seek out Peter Burt's THE MUSIC OF TORU TAKEMITSU (Cambridge University Press, paperback 2006). If you know little about the music of this great Japanese composer, the chamber music disc on Naxos makes a great introduction. And if you're drawn to further explore his intriguing body of work, the several DG reissues are a good purchase.