Naxos
2006
Takemitsu: A Flock Descends Into The Pentagonal Garden
About This Album
The music of composer Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996) is perhaps the perfect antidote for today's overstimulated and overstressed society: endlessly circular wisps of melody, gentle string harmonics, and an intelligently slow and steady pace. Most of his fellow Japanese contemporaries, including Akira Ifukube and Yuzo Toyama, wrote in a style much more influenced by their country's folk music. Takemitsu, though, was perhaps the first Asian composer who was successfully able to completely bridge the gap between East and West.

This Naxos release features the Bournemouth Symphony performing five of Takemitsu's best works with commitment, grace, and sensitivity under music director Marin Alsop's direction. All of the compositions featured are from varying time periods that effectively mark Takemitsu's styles. The six-minute, haunting Solitude Sonore (1958) was composed just a year after the composer met Stravinsky, who declared his Requiem a true work of "genius" and helped launch the young composer's career. Alsop gives great command to many of the minute details, especially the slowly twisting and bending notes in the strings. Dreamtime (1981) is similar in style to Solitude, but somewhat more peaceful and less coherent, evocative of the uncontrolled, fragmentary nature of dreams.
Track List

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