Takemitsu Solo Guitar Works and Transcriptions

courtesy of Naxos of America

A little more than a month ago, the Italian Stradivarius label released a single-CD album covering the complete works and transcriptions for solo guitar by Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu. Given current uncertainties about overseas shipping, Amazon.com is currently distributing this album only through MP3 download. As might be guessed, the guitar soloist on the album, Flavio Nati, is Italian.

My interest in Takemitsu’s music extends all the way back to my graduate student days, but my awareness of his guitar music was much more recent. Back when I found the offerings at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music more interesting, I frequently encountered performances of those guitar compositions by both faculty and students. Indeed, for a while it seemed as if I could not find a performance that did not include one of Takemitsu’s arrangements of a Beatles’ tune as an encore.

Takemitsu seems to have enjoyed enjoyed Beatles recordings, since he arranged four of their tracks: “Here, There and Everywhere,” “Michelle,” “Hey Jude,” and “Yesterday.” All four of these were clearly created around the sonorities of the guitar and the affordances of the performing techniques, which pretty much transcend any recollections of the Fab Four’s vocal deliveries. One can also appreciate that Takemitsu preferred the more intimate side of the Beatles canon, shying away from more assertive tunes like “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

All four of the tunes were included in a collection of twelve arrangements, which was published in 1977. Like the Beatles arrangements, the other transcriptions tend to an introspective rhetoric. This makes for intriguing interpretations of familiar songs such as George Gershwin’s “Summertime” (from his opera Porgy and Bess) and Harold Arlen’s “Over the Rainbow” (from the film The Wizard of Oz). Takemitsu’s quietude also serves well Charles Crozat Converse’s setting of the hymn “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” On the other hand, one is likely to have a what-was-he-thinking approach when listening to his transcription of “The Internationale!” The set of twelve arrangements is then followed by one last transcription, made in 1983, drawing upon “The Last Waltz,” the balled by Barry Mason and Les Reed best known through Engelbert Humperdinck’s hit single.

The arrangements are preceded by only five solo compositions. Three of these are collections: All in Twilight, four pieces composed in 1987, the three Folios pieces from 1974, and the three short tone poems in the In the Woods collection of 1995. Local readers are likely to appreciate that the last of those tone poems was inspired by Muir Woods. The pieces in both All in Twilight and Folios, on the other hand, have no “subject matter” and are identified only by tempo markings. There are also two single-movement compositions. “A Piece for Guitar” was composed in 1991 to honor the 60th birthday of composer Sylvano Bussotti. The five-minute “Equinox” was composed in 1993.

My initial impressions of Takemitsu came from recordings of ensemble compositions, many of which involved considerable resources and frequently adventurous forays into dissonances determined by both pitch classes and timbres. This album makes it clear that Takemitsu’s approach to large resources is a pendulum-swing away from his techniques for solo guitar composition. Many listeners may find this more intimate side to be a bit too sugar-coated, but there is always an underlying inventiveness that will definitely occupy the attention of the serious listener.