This is the second Takemitsu disc to appear in recent months: the first, from Virgin Classics (9/91), was of works for chamber ensemble. The focus here is the guitar—the ideal vehicle, it might be guessed, for Takemitsu's dreamy, introspective yet far from austere musical manner. And so, to a large extent, it proves.

The earliest music is in the solo pieces. Folios (1974) is unobtrusively characterful, with the unexpected appearance of the Bach St Matthew Passion chorale, "Wenn ich einmal soil scheiden", in No. 3. A very different hymn melody is the source of Takemitsu's transcription of What a Friend, which dates from 1977. What a friend we have in Jesus is inoffensively recast as a decorous piece of light music, along with Gershwin's Summertime and two other songs. John Williams makes the best of these miniatures, the immaculate recording catching the full range of the instrument's delicate colours.

The other compositions date from the 1980s. Toward the Sea takes risks in combining alto flute and guitar, the music often seeming too small scale and inturned for its own good. Though it is performed with the utmost refinement, the many pauses and silences almost come to seem more essential than the actual sounds. Vers, l'Arc-enciel, Palma is another mood piece; languid but not wholly soft-centred. There is a brilliant account of the oboe d'amore cadenza from Gareth Hulse, and no denying the skill with which Takemitsu himself sketches the outlines of a satisfying form on a canvas inspired by the paintings of Joan Miro.

Another painter, Paul Delvaux, inspired the strongest music on the disc, the guitar concerto To the Edge of Dream. Appropriately, in view of Delvaux's work, a distinct sense of menace emerges here to offset the more tranquil moods, and the orchestral contribution serves to control the guitar's improvisatory tendencies. We probably hear more of the guitar relative to the orchestra than would be the case in the concert-hall, but there is nothing unreasonably artificial about the result.

-- Gramophone [1/1992]