Toru Takemitsu
Asterism / Requiem / Green / The Dorian Horizon (LP)
1970 album on RCA which is the best introduction to the Japanese composer's beautiful orchestral music of the 1960's, conducted by Seiji Ozawa. Essential.
Quatrain / A Flock Descends Into The Pentagonal Garden (LP)
Classic 1980 DGG release with two of the Japanese composer's most acclaimed and accessible compositions from the 1970's.
November Steps / Et exspecto resurrectionem (LP)
Appropriate pairing of two orchestral avant-garde masterpieces composed in the 1960's on Philip's 1970 LP in the "Collection Trésors Classiques".
Piano Space 1 (LP)
1978 LP on Angel with a selection of experimental piano compositions from the box set with the same title, focusing on pieces by Japaniese composers from the 1970's, perfromed by Aki Takahashi.
Grimethorpe Special (LP)
Four avant-garde works for brass band composed in the 1970's and performed by the Grimethorpe Colliery Band conducted by Elgar Howarth, released on Decca's "Headline" contemporary music series in 1977. With insert.
Avantgarde (4LP Bundle)
Special discounted Bundle. Audiophile edition. Pure analogue mastering & cutting from the original master tapes. Representing three of the most essential and sought-after works within the canon of 20th Century avant-garde composition, this bundle brings together Luc Ferrari's Presque Rien No.1 / Société II, Mauricio Kagel's Acustica, and Tōru Takemitsu's Quatrain / A Flock Descends Into The Pentagonal Garden in a single offering. Originally issued by Deutsche Grammophon between 1970 and 1980, ou…
Quatrain / A Flock Descends Into The Pentagonal Garden
Containing what are easily among the important and celebrated works by Tōru Takemitsu, arguably Japan's most important and celebrated 20th Century avant-garde composer, 'Quatrain / A Flock Descends Into The Pentagonal Garden' was originally issued by Deutsche Grammophon in 1980. Had the Avant-Garde series not concluded nine years prior, it certainly would have been contained within its ranks. Illuminating a crucial juncture within the composer's career which not only found him fully embracing ac…
Now
1989 release **
Marubatoo (13:05) John Wyre Fauna (13:17) William CahnCymbal (11:55) Bob BeckerRain Tree (11:10) Toru TakemitsuRemembrance (9:36) Robin Engelman
"This is a fine collection of pieces performed by one of the premier percussion ensembles in the world. The Canadian quintet Nexus approaches the notion of the percussion ensemble with an ear for innovation and a discipline for virtuosity. Nowhere is this clearer in this disc than on the album's centerpiece, "Cymbal," by group leader Bob…
Orchestral Space
2009 release ** "Japan-for-U.S. CD reissue of Varèse Sarabande LP configuration (VX 81060), featuring contemporary, avant-garde classical performances, recorded live at Tokyo's Nissei Theatre in 1966 by the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Seiji Ozawa and Hiroshi Wakasugi, featuring performances of the works of nineteen separate composers, of which four were selected for this particular release. The packaging features an eight-page booklet with liner notes "based upon notes by Kun…
Searching For Fantasy / In The End (Ep)
Another legendary avantgarde soundtrack from Tokyo Senso Sengo Hiwa [The Man Who Left His Will on Film] directed by Nagisa Oshima, originally released in August 1970. Oshima’s avant-radical blend of Marxist politics, agitprop cool, and softcore is a heady time capsule of early 1970s Japanese counterculture, with a dreamy pop score by the great Toru Takemitsu
Corona - For Away - Piano Distance - Undisturbed Rest
Performed by Roger Woodward (piano). Recorded Decca Studio No.3, West Hampstead, London, 4 May 1973. This is the first International CD release featuring this recording. Was first released on Decca's HEAD label in 1974. For Takemitsu, sound can be beautiful without being significant, can signify beauty without making 'sense'. The quality of the music is thus elusive: it is not something one must necessarily 'understand', but perhaps rather absorb and accept. His works have, all the same, qualiti…
Complete Piano Works
Tōru Takemitsu was a Japanese composer and writer on aesthetics and music theory. Though largely self-taught, Takemitsu is recognised for his skill in the subtle manipulation of instrumental and orchestral timbre, drawing from a wide range of influences, including jazz, popular music, avant-garde procedures and traditional Japanese music, in a harmonic idiom largely derived from the music of Claude Debussy and Olivier Messiaen. In 1958, the international attention he drew with his Requiem for st…
Quatuor Hêlios
Isabelle Berteletti, Florent Haladjian, Jean-Christophe Feldhandler, Lê Quan Ninh. “D’une lumière” (1996) by Jean-Christophe Feldhandler for piano, electric guitar, melodica, percussions, etc., “Oscille” (1997) by Lê Quan Ninh for 4 stones, 4 lightnings II and computer, “Kvadrat” (1988) by Vinko Globokar for 4 percussions, “Seasons” (1970) by Toru Takemitsu for percussions and tape.