This CD throws light onto an aspect of Takemitsu’s
art, which until now has been little known. You may associate him with
those sensual, delicately orchestrated tone pictures like ‘November
Steps’ or ‘Riverrun’, which were recorded with much praise
during his lifetime. The delicacies of these scores are like painted
Japanese screens, subtle and spacious. These piano pieces, spanning
almost forty years, span different styles, as one might expect of any
composer and not, in many cases sounding particularly Japanese. It is
therefore of interest to see where Takemitsu was coming from before
the renowned orchestral works of the last decade or so of his life.
I will briefly discuss them in chronological order.
Despite the fact that the booklet (written in 1990
when the composer was very much alive) says that the works are dated
from 1952, ‘Litany’ dates from 1950 in its original form and
"it is only the refined treatment of certain details that suggest
the intervening hand of the Old(ish) master". This almost romantic
work dedicated to the memory of Michael Vyner betrays Takemitsu’s love
of three composers in particular, Debussy, Scriabin and Messiaen. The
latter is very noticeable in ‘Uninterrupted Rests’ also known
as ‘Three poems on a text of Takiguchi Shuzo’. The hothouse harmonies
may remind listeners of Messiaen’s Preludes for piano of 1929. But with
‘Piano Distance’ of 1961 we enter another world, that of the
Darmstadt avant-garde and of those composers intrigued by the sound-world
of Messiaen’s ‘Mode de valeurs et d’intensités’ (1949)
or even of Boulez’s piano sonatas. It is not an ingratiating work. Nor
for that matter is the extraordinary ‘Corona’ and ‘Crossing’
of the following year. The violent and continuously powerful sounds
of piano bass and scraping cymbal are, at first, gripping but as one
piece grows imperceptibly into another the length as a whole seems too
prolix.
‘For Away’ is a typical nocturnal meditation.
I was reminded here of Kaikhosru Sorabji and a piece like ‘Le Jardin
Parfumé’ (1923) and oddly enough even moments in Bernard
van Dieren’s ‘Six Sketches’ for piano of 1911. I don’t imagine
that Takemitsu had heard these composers’ music but each shares a fascination
with the exotic. Another thing that they have in common is a love of
a seeming lack of form and direction or, should I say, the ability to
allow each piece to find its own form. Sorabji once declared that his
music was the aural equivalent of a Persian rug, - highly elaborate
decoration. Takemitsu once discussed listening to his music in terms
of walking through a Japanese garden, luxurious and constantly changing
in texture and colour, never the same - one pattern bouncing off another.
After 1975 in most of his music this analogy is useful, as with both
parts of ‘Les yeux clos’ (the second part of which, although
Messiaen-inspired appears to be a sequential development of the ‘Tristan’
chord – a clue to Takemitsu’s language) and similarly in ‘Raintree
sketch’. I listened again to his ‘Rain Coming’ for chamber
orchestra and ‘Rain Spell’ both also from 1982 (Virgin Classics
nla) and realized that Takemitsu was born to write for orchestra, it
is there that the exoticism of his art flourishes with the intoxicating
wash of his favourite vibraphone, flute, strings and percussion and
that the piano music always sounds like a sketch for the real thing
– a uniquely colourful orchestral palette. I can now understand why
in his large output only these few works survive for piano alone. The
lines on one hand and the harmonies on the other are best brought out
by strands of specific orchestral colour as I feel ‘Les yeux clos’
demonstrates.
Roger Woodward is a real Takemitsu expert with works
such as ‘Uninterrupted Silence’ dedicated to him by the composer.
He loves and understands this music, with its myriad difficulties, and
is aided by an unspectacular but perfectly fine recording.
Gary Higginson
Roger Woodward (piano)