Composer: Toru Takemitsu
Performer: Philip Dukes, Sharon Bezaly, Noriko Ogawa
Orchestra: BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Conductor: Tadaaki Otaka
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: BIS
Catalogue: BISCD1300
Release: 2002
Size: 216 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
01. A String Around Autumn
02. I Hear the Water Dreaming
03. A Way a Lone II
04. Riverrun
Since Takemitsu’s evolution into selfconfessed Romantic, virtually every major label has released something by him, so Otaka has stiff competition, notably Patrick Gallois’s fine reading of Water Dreaming.
A Way A Lone II is included on Rudolf Werthen’s admirable survey of Takemitsu’s film and concert music. Aided effectively by the soloists, Otaka’s interpretations compare well.
In riverrun Takemitsu approached closer to the conventional soloist-ensemble than usual.
Noriko Ogawa, who has recorded the complete piano solos for BIS, judges the balance sensitively, preparing the ground for that moment when the orchestra leaves the piano to decorate the silence with a few farewell notes.riverrun and A Way A Lone draw inspiration from Finnegans Wake. Leif Hasselgren notes a parallel between the circular structure of Joyce’s novel and the way Takemitsu’s music seems to ‘start from nowhere and disappear into the same nowhere’. For all his acknowledged debt to French Impressionism, and to Japanese traditions, his early interest in electronic music – where sounds appear and fade like headlights on the horizon or plants flowering in a time-lapse film – has undoubtedly had a strong influence.
Sharon Bezaly’s flute playing intensifies the feeling that Water Dreaming is a perfect crash-course in later Takemitsu, full of references to his influences yet identifiable at any moment as pure, individual and personal Takemitsu, and always bewitching.