There is an old photograph
where a boyish Oliver Knussen towers
head and shoulders over Toru Takemitsu.
It captures the rapport between them.
This is only the third release on the
Sinfonietta’s own label, but it’s fitting
that it should feature Takemitsu. Ozawa
and Boulez may have premiered the works
on this recording, but the relationship
between the composer, Knussen and the
Sinfonietta was special. This recording
contains excerpts from an important
Takemitsu retrospective, sponsored by
the Sinfonietta in 1998. I don’t know
why they didn’t include the rest of
the programme, but just having it is
worthwhile. By sheer coincidence, the
release date would have been Takemitsu’s
76th birthday.
Takemitsu said that
Green was written "from
a wish to enter into the secrets of
Debussy’s music". Swathes of string
sound revolve, changing coloration as
starker, more dominant brass and woodwinds
enter. Then, in the last few moments
there’s a breakthrough into more vernal
openness, the emerging stillness accentuated
with the sound of a muted bell.
The atmosphere in Arc
is even more intense. It was written
specifically around the idea of a garden,
which in Japanese culture is a metaphor
for nature itself. Japanese gardens
evoke in miniature much wider elements
of landscape. At their most abstract,
they may seem no more than rocks and
sand. Monks who sweep the lines in the
sand of these gardens do so as a spiritual
exercise: they are recreating symbolic
waves, oceans, and limitless horizons
for the soul. Businessmen sometimes
have a tray garden, to escape without
leaving the office.
Not all Japanese gardens
are quite so ascetic, though. The vast
majority are filled with living plants,
rocks, water. This is the type of garden
I imagine Takemitsu was most at home
in, full of colour, light and movement.
At some periods of western garden history,
gardens were formally structured to
keep nature at bay. A Japanese garden
is quite the opposite. It exists to
bring the freedom of nature back into
human life. Hence the rocks and water,
bridges and hidden vistas that only
reveal themselves when you are in the
garden, involving yourself in its life.
Even fallen leaves are part of the concept:
the sight of maple leaves floating down
a stream has inspired many a poet. Nothing
could be further from this approach
to nature than the serried rows of bug-free
rosebushes in a western winter.
There is a film in
which Takemitsu is shown sitting in
a garden, explaining how it is a metaphor
for music. A garden is like an orchestra,
he says, consisting of lots of different
elements which a musician can arrange
in whatever order seems best. You can
increase the impact of some elements
by massing them, or extend their colours
by planting with others that complement
the palette. Sometimes some elements
capture the eye, such as autumn leaves,
while others remain a backbone, like
pines. Textures vary: sometimes the
delicacy of spring blossom, sometimes
the tough character of tree bark. Then,
too, there are extras, maybe the sound
of water trickling from a bamboo pipe,
or the chirping of crickets, or wind
blowing through leaves. Or even the
pattern of shade thrown by a cloud in
the sky. A gardener works with nature,
not against it. Thus a composer works
with an orchestra, extending it and
encouraging it to grow, but finding
his ideas organically and in balance.
Thus with Arc,
Takemitsu’s first explicitly "garden"
work, we enter on a six part journey
of exploration. Its foundation is a
hum on strings that drones like a flatline.
It is a low, steady murmur, from which
sudden sparks of sound shoot out, gradually
getting denser and more animated. The
piano enters, at first tentatively,
then joyously skittish as sounds around
it grow. Horns, clarinet, woodblocks,
trombone and other instruments can clearly
heard in short, impressionistic flashes.
The steady murmuring strings return,
but this time their individual voices
are more defined. Sharp, sudden dissonances
break the pace, and a clarinet soars
up the scale. In the third movement,
cellos and basses pick up the murmur
and gradually it turns into a wild dance,
tantalising sounds coming from all sides
in quick succession. This movement wasn’t
scored conventionally, and there’s no
mistaking its vitality. The lower notes
of the piano resonate with depth and
darkness. Then with a swooping crescendo,
the music transforms again. With scuttling,
scraping figures the music subsides
again. The piano’s sonorities now become
dry, toneless taps, and even the rumbling
murmur fades. The piano gets a bit of
time on its own, so to speak, but the
orchestra returns full force, led by
a fast-paced brass fanfare. In the coda,
the susurration of the strings, asserts
the primacy of their theme.
Anne Ozorio
[To be released on
8th October - the birthday of both Takemitsu
and Anne Ozorio!]
Rolf Hind (piano) 
