Thursday, November 7, 2019

TORU TAKEMITSU – [武満徹の作業] Works Of Toru Takemitsu - 4 (LP-1966)




Label: Victor ‎– VX-23
Series: Contemporary Music Of Japan – 4
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: Japan / Released: 1966
Style: Contemporary, Classical, Free Improvisation
Manufactured By – Victor Musical Industries, Inc.
Stereo-Orthophonic High Fidelity.  His Master's Voice.
Design – Kohei Sugiura
Photography By – Kiyoshi Otsuji
Engineer [Recording] – Takashi Watanabe
Producer – Jun Taki
Liner Notes – Kuniharu Akiyama
Translated By – George Saitô
Matrix / Runout (Side A runout, stamped): VX-23 – A / VLY 1063 122+ I OA GF
Matrix / Runout (Side B runout, stamped): VX-23 – B / VL Y 1064 152+

side 1:
A1 - Piano Distance ................................................................................................... 4:38
A2 - Pause Uninterrupted .......................................................................................... 7:50
        piano – Yuji Takahashi
A3 - Le Son Calligraphie No.1 for 8 strings ................................................................ 3:23
A4 - Le Son Calligraphie No.3 for 8 strings ................................................................ 2:37
        conductor – Hiroshi Wakasugi
        cello – Akiyoshi Kudo, Tadao Takahashi
        viola – Aya Tanaka, Junko Edo
        violin – Kenji Kobayashi, Mari Hirao, Miyuki Togawa, Namiko Umezu

side 2:
B - Eclipse For Shakuhachi And Biwa ...................................................................... 16:00
      biwa – Kinshi Tsuruta
      shakuhachi – Katsuya Yokoyama

ComposerToru Takemitsu

Takemitsu's compositional journey is fascinating because his relationship with western music and his native musical traditions shows just how limiting are the categories of east and west when it comes to thinking about music's development in the 20th century.


Takemitsu's enthusiasm saw him investigate electro-acoustic music in his early 20s (this was roughly the same time that Pierre Schaeffer was doing a similar thing in Paris), which led him to compose music in an explicitly modernist idiom. He was crazy about the Viennese School composers at the time. An encounter with Stravinsky, who had heard his 1957 Requiem for Strings and taken the young composer out to lunch because he admired the piece so much, was one catalyst for his musical life.
Another of Takemitsu's influences was the music of John Cage in the early 60s. Takemitsu began to explore aspects of indeterminacy in his work (the improvised sections of From Me Flows What You Call Time, for example, are down to this approach – even if Takemitsu's controlled aleatoricism has more in common with Witold Lutosławski than Cage). But it was also thanks to Cage's Zen-inspired ideas about music and the world, Takemitsu explained, that "I came to recognise the value of my own tradition".
The other seismic moment for Takemitsu was seeing a performance of Bunraku puppet theatre and, a couple of decades after the war, opening his heart at last to the beauty of his homeland's musical traditions. "I got a shock … I suddenly recognised I was Japanese."
From the 60s on, Takemitsu's musical project would be to combine elements of Japanese music with the western modernism he loved so much. The blend is apparent in pieces such as November Steps, composed for biwa (the Japanese lute he studied intensively), shakuhachi and orchestra. The effect is more profound than a fuzzy fusion of styles; Takemitsu uses the timbre and texture of the two Japanese instruments to make the whole orchestra breathe and glow with gossamer lightness, something he continues in a later work for the same instruments called Autumn.




But the real substance of Takemitsu's Japanese heritage can't be reduced to an instrument, a colour or even a harmony. There's something more fundamental about his understanding of music; something that informs his work whether he's writing for solo piano, a film score for Akira Kurosawa (he wrote music for more than 100 movies), a string quartet or a concerto. It's something expressed by the Japanese word "ma", which suggests the concept of a void that isn't empty, an absence that is really a presence, a space between things that is full of energy. It's a principle that underpins Japanese gardens, with which Takemitsu often compared his music. "My music is like a garden, and I am the gardener. Listening to my music can be compared with walking through a garden and experiencing the changes in light, pattern and texture." And yet it's also a way of thinking that is by no means exclusive to Takemitsu in contemporary music; it suggests the same circular, non-hierarchical sense of structure and time that composers from Anton Webern to Pierre Boulez, György Ligeti to Steve Reich have explored.
The idea of a meaningful void is worth keeping in mind when you're listening to music Takemitsu wrote in the last two decades of his life. His pieces are rarely long (From Me Flows What You Call Time is among the longest, at around half an hour), they are seldom fast and rarely overtly demonstrative – but they do weird things with time. Listen to his piano concerto, Riverrun (the title comes from Finnegan's Wake), or Quatrain (scored for clarinet, cello, violin, piano and orchestra) or his violin concerto Far Calls. Coming, Far! (another Joyce-inspired title), to experience what I mean. There's a lot to get to grips with in his output: as well as the catalogue of concert pieces, there are those film scores (start with Kurosawa's Ran), as well as music for radio, theatre and television.


Very subtle and specific music by the great Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu.



If you find it, buy this album!

97 comments:

  1. TORU TAKEMITSU - [武満徹の作業] – Works Of Toru Takemitsu - 4 (LP-1966)
    Vinyl Rip/FLAC-176+Artwork (343.08 MB)


    You can get the download link via:
    differentper@gmail.com

    Note:
    You only do this once, ensuring that you automatically receive a download link to your address for each newly released album here, without re-requesting.

    Regards

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you very much for your quality selection & rip as always.Please keep up the good work

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    2. Many thanks for the link. Wonderful to hear these earlier pieces and be able to read the context.

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    3. Thanks for this great post! Takemitsu has been one of my favourite composers since many years. Didn't know this record so far. Great to be able to listen to it now!

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  2. Thank You, can't wait to here this!

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  3. So happy to have this. Thank you very much!

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  4. Thanks a lot, Vitko. Takemitsu is a unique composer

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  5. Looking forward to this one. I first learned of Takemitsu via a US issue of his music: https://www.discogs.com/Toru-Takemitsu-Toronto-Symphony-Seiji-Ozawa-Asterism-Requiem-GreenDorian-Horizon/release/2605839 Major labels don't seem to do this sort of thing much anymore. Pity.

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  6. Thank you Vitko, your on a roll!

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  7. CHEERS! FOR ANOTHER GREAT POST!

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  8. Many thanks for all this wonderful music and good quality rips. Excellent sound.

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  9. Thank you Vitko, much appreciated. I'm sure I will enjoy this. And don't forget to check your mail.

    Cheers, Arthur

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  10. Wonderful, Vitko - many thanks!
    Lawrence

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  11. Thank you very much, for all 3 latest posts.
    Great music as allways.
    vharis34

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  12. What's the rarity! Many thanks, Vitko!

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  13. Thanks for this partage.
    Toru Takemitsu is really a very great composer.
    Thanks the link.
    DB

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  14. Thank you so much Vitko.

    For anyone interested, below is a link to a epub file of Takemitsu's ''Confronting Silence. Selected Writings''.

    https://drive.google.com/open?id=1whmUmxdtB_ea9v2Ss1cYbTxVhEj6I-m0

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  15. Thank you so much, I look forward to listening to this later today, cheers JC

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  16. thanks vitko yet again for another slice of Toru Takemitsu

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  17. As always, another great post. Thank you very much!

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  18. Thank you very much! God bless you!

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  19. Thanks so much for this!

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  20. Always up for some Takemitsu. Thanks for another goodie Vitko

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  21. This is wonderful. Thank you so much!

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  22. What a lavish post! Just an amazing collection of music with lush sound quality. Thank you Vito.

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  23. che meraviglia! una collezione mitica: grazie mille!

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  24. Very good trip in Japan.
    Trois fois MERCI, Vitko! TF

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  25. Thanks a lot!
    ありがとうございました

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  26. I have a couple of his later recordings. To hear some of his older compositions is a marvelous discovery. Thank you Vitko.
    Uwe

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  27. Toru Takemitsu! Excellent, thanks.

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  28. Very grateful to share this wonder with us.
    Excellent blog.
    zaratustrato.

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  29. This looks quite interesting -- can't wait to hear it. Thanks so much for posting.

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  30. Love Takemitsu's work. Very appreciative of your genorosity and the
    work you put into these rips. Thanks for the link.

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  31. Thank you for sharing. Looking forward to hearing these pieces.

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  32. Vitko, thank you for your recent shares. Your sound palate keeps growing wider and deeper and it's always a wonder to see what pops up next on your amazing blog!

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  33. Looks excellent... thanks so much!

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  34. And the treasure hunt continues. Thank you, Vitko.

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  35. Thank you for 5 download links,thank you for this japanese music

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  36. Thank you Vitko, you are THE example of how to use the power of internet for a good cause.

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  37. Hi Vikto.
    Thank you very much, you have been very kind.

    Rob

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  38. Most wonderful! Thank you very much, Vitko.

    Edward

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  39. great and thanks for the share!!
    mei

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  40. Thanks for sharing. I like your combination of jazz and composed music.

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  41. Thanks so much Vitko, for sharing this great music! Cheers

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  42. Thank you for sharing such interesting music.

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  43. Wonderful gift, Vitko, many thanks

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  44. Thank you very much for the link and for sharing all these marvellous records

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  45. A masterpiece of contemporary and traditional japanese music fusion. Sound for a daydream. Thx a lot Vitko for providing this recording!

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  46. Much appreciated! Keep up this excellent work!

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  47. I really appreciate Toru Takemitsu's inventiveness and this record I didn't know about is excellent, especially the Le Son Calligraphie piece and the Eclipse for Shakuhachi and Biwa. Thank you for this discovery and sharing.

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  48. écouter Takemitsu, c’est pénétrer une forêt remplie de brume et de brouillards silencieux, à l’affut du moindre son apporté par les vents imprévisibles et mystérieux de l’au-delà… Vitko, c’est une découverte vertigineuse ! merci.

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  49. Thank you! This is just plain beautiful music, with Eclipse as the high point. The first time I heard it was on Swedish Radio way back - sitting in my parked car, smoking, while raindrops made beautiful patterns running slowly down my windscreen.

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  50. A relaxing but reflexive sound. Thank you Vitko for these rare gem!

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  51. Wonderful music. Many thanks, Vitko!

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  52. Many thanks for this Vitko.

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  53. Endless thanks! Love this one.

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  54. Thanks for the great music and the lovely transfers.

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  55. fantastic blog... thanks for keeping this running. cheers!

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  56. many thanks, Vitko! . wonderful stuff!

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  57. Thank you for this wonderful & rare music.

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  58. Thanks a lot such a great record from a great composer...

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  59. Thank you so much! this blog is awesome!

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  60. Tahnk you very much for your great work.

    Sincerely

    JRAC

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  61. Many thanks for these Takemitsu records. You are a true gem!

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  62. Thank you so much for this site and your wonderful responsiveness. Very much appreciated. Well curated and laid out. Keep up the good work!

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  63. Wow, I can't wait to dig in to this. This bits I have heard previously by Toru have been very on point. Am guessing what you are sharing is special stuff. Thank you again for generosity.

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  64. thanks Vitkol - superb sounds, much appreciated

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  65. Dear Dominic:

    Can you reupload the "Selected Writings" archive.
    I would really appreciate.

    Sincerely

    JRAC

    ReplyDelete