Label: Victor – VX-20
Series: Contemporary Music Of Japan – 1
Format: Vinyl, LP, Stereo / Country: Japan / Released: 1966
Style: Musique Concrète, Contemporary, Experimental
Manufactured By – Victor Musical Industries, Inc.
Stereo-Orthophonic High Fidelity. His Master's Voice
Design – Kohei Sugiura
Engineer [Recording] – Takashi Watanabe
Producer – Jun Taki
Liner Notes – Kuniharu Akiyama
Matrix / Runout (Runout, Side A, Stamped): VX-20 – VLY 1055 122+ 1DCSCDFG II I OA
Matrix / Runout (Runout, Side B, Stamped): VX-20 – VLY 1056 152+
side 1:
A1 - Requiem For Srings........................................................................................... 9:55
A2 - The Horizon, Dorian - 8 Harmonic Pitches With 9 Echoes............................... 11:05
Conductor – Hiroshi Wakasugi
Orchestra – Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra
side 2:
B - Coral Island For Soprano And Orchestra......................................................... 16:40
Conductor – Hiroshi Wakasugi
Orchestra – Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra
Soprano Vocals – Mutsumi Masuda
Takemitsu’s interest in a wide variety of artistic expressive forms and his individual sense of freedom developed through his autodidacticism shaped the character of his avant-garde style.
As early as 1950, he utilised a tape recorder to create musical collages from “real” sounds ("musique concrète": Water Music, 1960; Kwaidan, 1964). In the early 1960s, two new elements appeared in Takemitsu’s works: on the one hand, traditional Japanese music (November Steps – for biwa, shakuhachi and orchestra) in the form of the deliberate juxtaposition of Eastern and Western musical culture and, on the other hand, the musical representation of natural phenomena (ARCI for orchestra, 1963-1966). Representations of the art of Japanese gardens through the utilisation of symbolic musical metaphors are frequently encountered in his compositions.