Takemitsu - Litany and Rain Tree Sketch II

[cbreemer]

I'm a newbie here and have been hesitant to post something of my own, seeing the awesome quality of many submissions here. Some fine pianists in these quarters indeed !

But as far as I can see nobody has posted any Takemitsu here yet, so why not take the plunge. These two of my recent recordings came out well I think. The piano is an old Gaveau grand, the recording device a Tascam DR-1 mp3 recorder. Any feedback welcome.

Takemitsu - Litany In Memory of Michael Vyner (1989)
Takemitsu - Rain Tree Sketch II (1992)  

[birba]

Very fine sensitive playing.  I had bought some Takemitsu when I was in Tokyo many years ago, but never went ahead and learned it.  Just the sight of it scared me.  Maybe I should take it out again.  There were moments in the litany when it really sounded Japanese!!!!  And your touch in the rain tree piece was so delicate and refined.  I enjoyed this very much!

[pianoplayjl]

I have heard of this composer but never heard of his music. No need to worry, your playing is fine and up there!

JL

[cbreemer]

Thanks guys ! I find this music exquisitely beautiful, Takemitsu's use of dissonants being quite otherworldly. I hope I've projected my love for these pieces onto the recordings.

[alessandro]

Thanks guys ! I find this music exquisitely beautiful, Takemitsu's use of dissonants being quite otherworldly. I hope I've projected my love for these pieces onto the recordings.

Thanks for posting some Takemitsu.   I believe you when you say you love these pieces.  I would like to make one point of critique, it's just a thought, I think there is, as it is the case for many Asian things in life, there is some kind of different approach to movement, to food, to music in opposition to a more Western type of view.  Of course, though the idiom, the score itself, is plainly universal, and though the music can universally be enjoyed, there is still a Japanese core in it.   It reminds of a sense of disconfort that I had listening to a Swiss recording of Ginastera's Dances played by Uchida.  Talking about your performance of the Rain Tree Sketch; you play this music in a grounded, anthropocentric way.   For me, it doesn't suit this music.   This music is in the first place a Sketch of Rain Tree.   There can be for example some drops of water in it, one here and a few there, and lots of air and oxygen.   You could create distance between the person looking at the tree and the tree itself, at least some distance in the approach of the tree and the music.   Try more 'pointing' at things, than incarnating them.   And could make all this happen in an atmosphere of freshness, pureness, minerality, some transcendental, original force of nature.    I don't know if I make myself understandable, but I think that, without having to meditate a lot about the sense of this piece, there is something that could be done regarding the state of mind, the approach of this Sketch in the first place.   Anyway, thanks for posting this piece and kind regards to you and everybody on this forum.

[alessandro]

Rereading my post, I think I had too much, as often, of an authoritarian tone, sorry for that, I can't help it.   I'm an amateur myself.   It's just that, if I can say it differently, or metaphorically, you can do the same walk but with another pair of shoes.  I think, what is so beautiful in this music of Takemitsu, and in the Rain Tree Sketch more specifally, it's that he creates, more like a conductor, a picture of sounds, a painting with shapes.  It feels like you play this with too much of an approach as - let's say - a Beethoven sonata, you know what I mean.   There is too few abstraction in it ? You as a pianist, are too much "present".   Again a metaphor ; let the paint drop in the canvas, make a light stroke here an there.   This is a piece that can be performed or can sound - every time the same person plays it - differently ; (because) one has to listen to the sounds that you are producing.   There are a multitude of spots where the 'starving' of the sound is so beautiful but you don't give it the time, you interrupt the exquisite suspension of the tone that is floating, hanging there in the 'air'.   Give the notes and the chords their time, breath and put a lot of oxygen and silence in the piece.   Finally, listen, listen very curiously and very carefully to the music you are producing while playing this piece.   We always have to do that, but for this type of music more than ever.   Very kind greetings cbreemer and to everyone.

[cbreemer]

Thanks for your thoughts alessandro. You evidently care for this music, too, and I hear what you're saying. Quote probably I am playing this in a too objective, western, sort of way. To be honest I am more accustomed to playing Bach than Takemitsu, and I'd only known these pieces maybe a month or so, before I recorded them. But I just had to do them, they are so beautiful....

Perhaps this music needs an Asian player, with the right Confucian mind set, capable of playing in
a more abstracted and patient way, using light brush strokes. It would be interesting to hear what Uchida would make of these pieces. If she was not so preoccupied with Schubert and Mozart....

Still, listening back to these, I'm quite happy with them (and that does not happen often) even while recognizing they could have been done much better.

[alessandro]

I'm glad you don't take it bad, I can be so clumsy expressing my thoughts.

Perhaps this music needs an Asian player, with the right Confucian mind set, capable of playing in a more abstracted and patient way, using light brush strokes.

No, I don't think so.   It's kind of fifty-fifty Japanese-Western if I may say so.  But there is indeed a very abstract, mysterious, cosmological zing to it, and I'm quite sure, if you find the right state of mind, the right state of approach, you can make a good performance of this Sketch.   Think also about the concept of a "sketch" ; two things ;you know, the drawings that Degas made of ballerina's ? Those are also (western  ) drawings, sketch-like, and it is exactly because it are sketches that they are so subtly "right" for depicting the dancers.

https://www.google.be/imgres?q=ballet+dancer+standing+degas&hl=nl&sa=X&qscrl=1&nord=1&rlz=1T4SKPB_nlBE358BE359&biw=1280&bih=591&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=BRRalCBGVQ8ryM:&imgrefurl=https://www.frenchdrawings.org/search.php%3Fdwg%3D489%26vol%3D%26vo%3D%26vl%3D%26owner%3D%26isKiosk%3D%26SIZE%3DFULL&docid=-MXGQSy6TQteNM&imgurl=https://www.frenchdrawings.org/images/full/1950.12.659.jpg&w=888&h=1117&ei=WCtAT6GxFo-e-QbS--i1BQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=168&vpy=2&dur=7765&hovh=252&hovw=200&tx=123&ty=68&sig=118034466638140451025&page=1&tbnh=124&tbnw=99&start=0&ndsp=27&ved=0CEEQrQMwAA

Sometimes, a contour, a darkened shape, a strangely darker shade, a correction within a line, tells exactly what it is about...  
And, coïncidence, it also makes me think of this contest for 'water-colour' (aquarelle) paintings for which an acquantance has been selected.   In the 100 selected painters, most of them are Anglo-American and Asian(Japan - page 17-18-19 ; you will notice, while most of them are painting a flower, a house, a landscape, a bike, these Japanese have a very outstanding abstract approach of the picture, something really different).


https://www.royalwatercoloursociety.co.uk/documents/4037b9ed-43b0-4c06-9baa-548f4a9897cd.pdf

Very kind greetings.  


    

[cbreemer]

This is the kind of subtle interpretative detail that would likely be discussed at a master class. More about what's behind and around the notes than the notes themselves. Ah well, one can always do better