*** Vinyl LP ***

A high-grade transfer to LP for a 2018 album of popular songs in delightful transcriptions by Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996), and played by an Italian guitarist who has made a speciality of this repertoire.

‘My music is like a garden, and I am the gardener. Listening to my music can be compared to walking through a garden and experiencing the changes in light, pattern, and texture.’ Widely considered to be the greatest composer in the classical music tradition in modern Japan, Toru Takemitsu merged Japanese and Western instruments and techniques to create a unique sound world.

During the post-war years, in his youth, Takemitsu came into contact with Western music through radio broadcasts the American occupying forces – not only jazz, but especially classical music by Debussy and Schoenberg. ‘Every afternoon they broadcast three hours, of beautiful classical music – Bruno Walter, Toscanini, or Paul Whiteman from the Hollywood Bowl. I listened to radio every day. My first teacher was the radio.’

Takemitsu found a meeting place between pop and classical music in his scores for almost a hundred Japanese films such as Kurosawa’s acclaimed Ran. The guitar also took a starring role in several of in concert works, such as the concerto To the Edge of Dream, and solo pieces such as Towards the Sea.

But these transcriptions belong to a lighter genre, and make an affectionate homage to songwriters from George and Ira Gershwin to Lennon and McCartney. Londonderry Air, Over the Rainbow and The Internationale will not be found together on very many song albums, but Takemitsu’s taste was as broad as his sensibility was refined. Amours perdues is a classic example of the postwar French chanson, by Joseph Kosma, while What a Friend (we have in Jesus) is a revivalist hymn from 1850s America.

Andrea Dieci has recorded Takemitsu’s ‘own’ concert music for the guitar more than once, lending his performance of these transcriptions a particular authority.