Toru Takemitsu
The Film Music of Toru Takemitsu (Nonesuch Film Series 79404)

Released in 1997 as part of a seemingly short-lived series devoted to film composers (I think only four volumes came out in the series), this compilation of selected film music by Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu makes a strong argument both for Takemitsu's stature as a composer of film music and "serious" music.

The problems I have with the disc are the same ones I have with a lot of film scores and classical recordings: too many dynamics. I don't like CDs that get real quiet and then real loud. If that makes me a wussy, then just beat me up after school, 'cause I'm a big wussy.

Actually, I suppose it depends on the music, because there's plenty of music I enjoy that demonstrates extreme dynamic change (I like Stockhausen, for example), and I love opera, but I tend to prefer chamber music over symphonies simply because I don't have to keep changing the volume to compensate for quietness and loudness.

Which says nothing about the music here. The CD is mostly original soundtrack recordings and a few newly-recorded orchestral versions of Takemitsu's film music, and it is pretty solid, although I can't say I listen to it much. Takemitsu draws on all sorts of things musically: traditional Japanese string and flute music, European baroque, and 20th century dissonance find their way into various parts of the CD, sometimes within the same track.

The overarching style is primarily late-19th Century European classical (think Mahler) with Japanese coloring. I suppose Takemitsu's movie music isn't too far from the conventional Hollywood music of the 50s and 60s (lots of violins and an affinity for waltzes), but in this recording it comes across as more atmospheric and able to stand by itself apart from the visual images to which it had been tied.

Music from "Rikyu" (1989) opens the disc, a fifteen minute suite that blends extremely dark, menacing strings and pedal tones with Japanese classical music to good effect. As with many soundtracks, though, it's not exactly "put it on in the background" sort of music. The newly recorded tracks follow, featuring composer John Adams conducting the London Sinfonietta. These tracks are among the most satisfying to me, probably because they are the most straightforward and "pretty."

The three selections are presented sort of like an opus in themselves, and labeled "Three Film Scores for String Orchestra" – music from "Jose Torres" (1959), "Black Rain" (1989), and "The Face of Another" (1966). The waltz from that last film is easily the best track on the disc, very beautiful and memorable.

Other highlights include "Kaseki" (1974), a very pretty guitar-based piece that is dramatic and not without tension, and which reminds me a lot of the "Emanuelle" movie music (but then, what doesn't?), and music from Kurosawa's "Dodes'kaden" (1970), which rips off some melodies from "MacArthur Park."

Actually, now that I think of it, I think the music from "Rikyu" rips off "Greensleeves." Fortunately I love both of those songs, or I'd be getting all "Damn Japanese! Ripping off good old American elbow grease!" or something like that.

The CD is at its best with the lyrical pieces, and those make the darker pieces a bit less enjoyable than if there had been a whole disc devoted to the more challenging pieces. It's never easy to mix the tremendously beautiful with the menacing, unless you count Billy Zane.

Recommended mostly for film music aficionados and people who can't quite get themselves to buy "real" classical music, The Film Music of Toru Takemitsu is a nice halfway point between a simple soundtrack and a major classical work.

It's difficult to say whether Takemitsu will eventually be regarded in the pantheon of important 20th Century composers (it's also difficult to say if anyone at all will be considered important from the late 20th Century, except those computers that compose music, seeing as in 10 years we'll all be a slave race to overlord computer-generated mind control experts), but this is as fine as film music gets. Makes Titanic look like a third-grade class musical, but then again, so does a third-grade class musical.

Loud Bassoon rating scale

Review by Lula Babcock