Toru Takemitsu - Rain Coming for Chamber Orchestra Archipelago S for 21 players - Fantasma/Cantos II for Trombone & Orchestra - Requiem for Strings - How Slow the Wind for Orchestra - Tree Line for Chamber Orchestra - BIS 2000

This BIS recording of Takemitsu orchestral works is one of my absolute favorites and it's on par with the must-have Denon recordings. The other Takemitsu discs on BIS are also splendid. Plenteous riches!!

I'm sticking with 'lazy' for now so here's a review from CT:

It is rare to find a disc as creatively programmed as this BIS release. Enhanced by lovely performances, played with great devotion to the memory of the recently-deceased Japanese master, the repertoire was chosen by conductor Tadaaki Otaka and producer Robert Suff, who organized it not only in the most effective succesion, but in a manner that illustrates the works' individual meaning and illuminates Takemitsu's career.

All but one of the compositions are from Takemitsu's late period. The other, the Requiem for Strings, is one of the earliest works to win him fame. Fantasma/Cantos II, for trombone and orchestra, is among the last Takemitsu compositions. Both it and the Requiem provide considerably more forward harmonic motion than the other four works, which are in Takemitsu's typical "Japanese garden" meditative style, a kind of revival of French impressionism using harmonies that are more like Messiaen's than Debussy's.

Christian Lindberg is well known to fans of the BIS label as one of the greatest masters of the trombone, seemingly undaunted by any challenge. He also is a musician of wide interests who has recorded all sorts of music for that instrument. Although his part in Fantasma/Cantos II no doubt is quite difficult, it is not written to make a virtuoso effect, and Lindberg shows that the loudest instrument in the orchestra is capable of unexpectedly subtle, gentle singing. And when Takemitsu permits loud sounds, Lindberg stays within the composer's undemonstrative aesthetic.

The nearest conducting competitor Otaka has in this music is Oliver Knussen, who has recorded four of these pieces for Virgin Classics and Deutsche Grammophon. Otaka gets the nod by banishing (except in Requiem, where it belongs) the hard-edged modernist feeling that slightly impairs Knussen's accounts.

The Kioi Sinfonietta of Tokyo is a select group of top-flight Japanese orchestral players plus some of their most talented younger counterparts. In this age where "training orchestras" frequently are first-rate ensembles, the Kioi sounds like an experienced group of long-term pros. Woodwind soloists beautifully play the short melody fragments that are so common in the descriptive pieces, and the whole ensemble seems to float effortlessly into Takemitsu's trademark meditative mood. The most lovely piece is How slow the wind, which has a gorgeous six-note melody. Tree Line, a more austere and static piece depicting a row of acacia trees near Takemitsu's studio, is impressively dark and mysterious.

The sound is absolutely clear. The disc is an SACD hybrid comprising two stereo music programs (one a standard CD, the other DSD) but no surround-sound, which would have been particularly desirable for the spatially conceived Archipelago S. Overall the SACD offers a substantially more natural sound than the standard CD layer.

In his own field Takemitsu was as important an artist as Kurosawa was in Japanese cinema. This disc is an excellent demonstration of the reason why, and is highly recommended to those who already understand this, but especially to those who have not yet realized it.

--Joseph Stevenson, ClassicsToday.com


Enjoy everyone!



Takemitsu-How_Slow_the_Wind_Orch.Works-Tzadik.zip
http://www91.zippyshare.com/v/ALH5OgDj/file.html

Toru Takemitsu - "Between Tides & Other Chamber Music" - Fujita Piano Trio - ASV 2001

I have been listening to (or I could say that it's been a necessary ingredient for living lately) a lot of Takemitsu, so, here are a couple of Takemitsu uploads for everyone to enjoy and bathe in. This disc opens with some rather early pieces and moves right on to works penned towards the end of his life.

No time for babble today, I present you with the music alone ;)

Enjoy!

Between_Tides-Chamber_Music_of_Takemitsu-Tzadik.zip

http://www95.zippyshare.com/v/tiI4IyGA/file.html

Film Music of Toru Takemitsu - 7 CD Box Set - 武満徹映画音楽 - Various artists, Orchestras and Ensembles - Victor Entertainment Japan, 2006

These are probably the rarest Takemitsu recordings around. Toru Takemitsu composed music for at least 70 films (I have read that it's actually around 90 but I haven't researched this) and the music can be exceptionally wide-ranging: traditional Japanese soloists and ensembles, Western classical tradition, avant-garde and everything in between (jazzy lounge and space age music, anyone?) I feel that some of his best film scores are those which have his delicate Debussian touches combined with traditional Asian music and soloists. The employment of the koto, biwa and shakuhachi is particularly effective. I cannot think of any other composers who have explored so many genres within their film score discography. This boxed set is such a precious gem collection and an immense pleasure for any Takemitsu fan. A comprehensive boxed survey of the great Takemitsu's film music would be an ambitious undertaking to say the very least - and I'd guess that it would take the world record for the only recorded collection that would be physically impossible to lift in one go ;)    And yes, I know about the "complete" Bach recordings I came close to buying them once..

One film composition that I am especially fond of (unfortunately it's not included in this collection) is Takemitsu's delicate and ethereal score to Kihachiro Kawamoto's "House of Flame", which is a wondrous stop-motion animation work by the brilliant filmmaker and animator Kihachiro Kawamoto. Kawamoto uses three-dimensional puppets and flat paper figures in combination with various background effects, such as drawn animation and multi-plane layering and the effect is stunning. I urge anyone interested to get the dvd "The Exquisite Short Films of Kihachiro Kawamoto" which for me is magical viewing and one of my favorite animation dvds. 

I checked youtube to see if Takemitsu's score for House of Flame has been shared as a performance however it is the short film (19 mins) itself by Kawamoto that is posted. Unfortunately the video as uploaded here has Russian subtitles which will make it impossible to follow the story for most audiences. The "original" has English subtitles and thus one would have to save the file and hope to locate a .srt subtitle file on the 'net someplace. If you don't mind the titles, needless to say the score and visuals make up for it. The audio quality is ok. If you care to check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whnBvlbVhV0

Disc 7 is unnumbered

The actual boxed set:

Disc(s)/Tracks info (almost all of the texts in this set are in Japanese):

Disc one: Directed by Masaki Kobayashi

1-1 Kwaidan/Ghost Stories
1-2 Harakiri
1-3 Glowing Autumn
1-4 The Inheritance
1-5 Hymn to a Tired Man
1-6 The Fossil

Dusc 2: Directed by Masahiro Shinoda

2-1 The Petrified Forest
2-2 Silence
2-3 With Beauty & Sorrow
2-4 The Assassin
2-5 Samurai Spy
2-6 Ballad of Orin
2-7 Clouds at Sunset

Disc 3: Directed by Nagisa Oshima/Susumu Hani

3-1 Empire of Passion
3-2 The Man Who Left His Will on Film
3-3 Dear Summer Sister
3-4 The Ceremony
3-5 Bad Boys
3-6 A Full Life

Disc 4: Directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara

4-1 The Face of Another
4-2 Summer Soliders
4-3 Pitfall
4-4 Shiroi asa
4-5 Woman in the Dunes
4-6 Jose Torres
4-7 The Ruined Map
4-8 Rikyu

Disc 5: Directed by Akira Kurosawa, Toichiro Narushima, Shiro Toyoda, Mikio Naruse, Shohei Imamura

5-1 Dodesukaden
5-2 Time Within Memory
5-3 Illusion of Blood
5-4 Scattered Clouds
5-5 Black Rain

Disc 6: Directed by Kon Ichikawa, Noboru Nakamura, Hideo Onchi

6-1 Kyoto
6-2 Alone on the Pacific
6-3 Twin Sisters of Kyoto
6-4 Nijuissai no chichi
6-5 The Kii River
6-6 Once a Rainy Day
6-7 The Call of Flesh
6-8 Wonderful Bad Woman
6-9 Shiawase

Disc 7: Bonus Disc

7-1 Beast Alley (Eizo Sugawa)
7-2 Saigo no shinpan (Hiromichi Horikawa)
7-3 Sabita en (Masahisa Sadanaga)
7-4 Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees (Masahiro Shinoda)
7-5 to 7-17 Conversation with Toru Takemitsu  -Entirely in Japanese :(



Takemitsu_Film_Music_cd1-Tzadik.zip
http://www3.zippyshare.com/v/GA79A6qm/file.html

Takemitsu_Film_Music_cd2-Tzadik.zip
http://www97.zippyshare.com/v/nzgn8Kt2/file.html

Takemitsu_Film_Music_cd3-Tzadik.zip
http://www54.zippyshare.com/v/pFsj3huL/file.html

Takemitsu_Film_Music_cd4-Tzadik.zip
http://www63.zippyshare.com/v/cc4SZPnK/file.html

Takemitsu_Film_Music_cd5-Tzadik.zip
http://www10.zippyshare.com/v/RxtaneXp/file.html

Takemitsu_Film_Music_cd6-Tzadik.zip

http://www53.zippyshare.com/v/YDRGxPqb/file.html

Takemitsu_Film_Music_cd7_bonus-Tzadik.zip

http://www61.zippyshare.com/v/1DlfLH1B/file.html

Booklet notes (majority is in Japanese):

Takemitsu_photos_booklets.zip

http://www30.zippyshare.com/v/Z3xI8tK7/file.html

Enjoy everyone!!

Toru Takemitsu: Complete Original Solo Guitar Works (And Leo Brouwer - Hika: In Memoriam Toru Takemitsu - El Arpa y la Sombra: Omaggio a Toru Takemitsu) Shin-ichi Fukuda, Guitar - Naxos 2014

I don't know about you but I have never met a single work by Takemitsu that I didn't like (even his more abstract, experimental music..and some of the best examples were written for film). His guitar music is, not surprisingly, both beautiful and steeped in delicate simplicity. Leo Brouwer's reverence for Takemitsu takes shape here in two homage works, both of which provide a sense of energy to the otherwise meditative program. Interestingly, the last two tracks taken from Takemitsu's "Twelve Songs for Guitar" are both songs by the Beatles! Takemitsu pulls it off deftly and these arrangements are both winsome and haunting.

Enjoy my fellow sound travelers! 

Toru_Takemitsu-Solo_Guitar_Works-Tzadik.zip

http://www102.zippyshare.com/v/YHGTq5wm/file.html

Acoustic Counterpoint: Classical Guitar Music from the 1980's - Sir Michael Tippett, The Blue Guitar - Reich, Electric Counterpoint (solo guitar) - Maxwell Davies, Sonata - Roberto Sierra, Triptico - Toru Takemitsu, All In Twilight - David Tanenbaum, Guitar - The Shangihai Quartet - New Albion 1990

I haven't posted any guitar music in a long time (actually I haven't posted enough guitar music on here period) so here is a very fine disc on New Albion with one of my favorite guitarists, David Tanenbaum. I thought to post this recording because I have been listening to a lot of Roberto Sierra lately, chamber music and a few wonderful concertos in particular, and I just found this in my piles. Sierra's "Triptico", which I barely remember, is scored for Guitar and String Quartet, and I am really warming up to it, the second of the three movements "Ritmico" is especially electric and this might just become my favorite work here. 

I have always been fond of Tippett's "The Blue Guitar", and here Tanenbaum plays it rather straightforwardly, and crisply; this is not a bad thing, Tanenbaum strums with great precision, his take is just a tad more serious in atmosphere. My favorite version is on an older Nimbus disc entitled "The Blue Guitar", definitely a disc I'd want to share with all of you when I can find it. Takemitsu's "All In Twilight" is a gentle, contemplative work-the four movements a state of musical nirvana (as one would expect!). Steve Reich's "Electric Counterpoint", which otherwise I could take or leave-is here presented in its guitar arrangement (what a bloomin' surprise ay??) and I do enjoy it-as in it's Reich that I would actually give repeat listenings. The least interesting piece for me personally is the Sonata by Peter Maxwell Davies. It's not bad at all, it's just these ears. I have never been a huge fan of Maxwell Davies for whatever reason.

Enjoy ye guitar-heads and explorers alike!

David_Tanenbaum-Acoustic_Counterpoint-Tzadik.zip

http://www81.zippyshare.com/v/77poygiP/file.html

"Air" - Claude Debussy and Toru Takemitsu - Yolanda Kondonassis - Oberlin 21

This (beautiful) Telarc disc is the only Takemitsu I seem to have with me in this location; a decent hunt through storage will do the trick, but I dunnoo when I'll have the time for such things right now. 

Debussy's "Danses" which I just love gets a really nice performance here, although my favorite recording of "Danses Sacree et Profane" is a Chandos recording with Yan Pascal Tortelier and the Ulster Orchestra on an all Debussy disc. The scrumptious "Sonate" for Flute, Harp and Viola is lovingly played here as well. The title "And Then I Knew 'Twas Wind" comes from a line in an Emily Dickinson poem and the composer explained that its subject was the wind not only in the natural world but also in the soul and mind. It's also scored for Flute, Harp and Viola and I imagine Takemitsu's admiration for Debussy might have been the inspiration for this most magic of instrumental combinations. Crystalline and gorgeous this work is. 

"Toward the Sea II" has a movement set unexpectedly in a New England environment; its three movements are The Night, Moby Dick and "Cape Cod". The programmatic aspect is vague, with the work evocative of the sea in Takemitsu’s advanced Zen-like tonal style, similar to Debussy in his "La Mer". Takemitsu's "Air" takes us into the interior spaces where air, as in breath, comes almost to a standstill. But it gently flows again with Debussy's Syrinx, which relates the story of a nymph who transforms herself into a reed. Enjoy..

Air.Debussy.Takemitsu.Tz.zip

http://www68.zippyshare.com/v/98343263/file.html