The first Japanese composer to achieve international status, Toru Takemitsu proposed a fusion between Western music and the culture of his country. His music radiates a lyrical intensity that comes as much from his roots in the early modernists Debussy and Alban Berg as from his affinity with the more overtly experimental mid-twentieth-century styles of John Cage and Morton Feldman. Played throughout the world, he is considered one of the most important composers of the second half of the 20th century. Of the four works gathered here, three feature the guitar. Inspired by a poem by Emily Dickinson, Spectral Canticle takes the listener through elusive sonic transformations corresponding to the changing seasons evoked by the poem. To the Edge of Dream has an eerie mood and celebrates the haunting, often sinister paintings of Belgian surrealist painter Paul Delvaux. Also inspired by a work of art, Vers, l’arc-en-ciel, Palma, with its refined writing, is close to the spectral composers. Finally, Twill by Twilight for orchestra expresses the moment, just after sunset, when twilight turns into darkness in a delicate and uncluttered pointillism.

REVIEWS:

Clearly all the soloists were prepared for this challenging music-making, as was the BBC Philharmonic. With informative liner notes, one comes away from this recording with an excellent sense of Takemitsu’s writing for guitar and orchestra.

-- American Record Guide

Exceptional accounts here of four of the Japanese composer’s works, with soloists and orchestra alive to the extraordinary coexistence of stillness and threat in Takemitsu’s writing. Startlingly vivid, his sound pictures capture the changing of light, seasons, emotions and memories with unblinking clarity.

-- The Sunday Times (UK)