© 2006 Lawrence Tuczynski
CD Information courtesy of Rich Housh
| Title | Complete Takemitsu Edition 4 Music For Movies 2 [4] |
| CD Label | Shogakukan Inc. & Toho Music Corp. |
| CD Number | STZ-42~44 |
| Music by: | Toru Takemitsu |
| Number of tracks | Disc 1 : 54 Disc 2 : 59 Disc 3 : 48 |
| Running time | Disc 1 - 75:35 Disc 2 - 58:34 Disc 3 - 77:13 |
| Number of discs | 3 |
| Year of release/manufacture | 2003 |
| REVIEW |
September 1, 2006 Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996) did film scores for 93 movies. These COMPLETE TAKEMITSU EDITION 4, Music For Movies sets give us many of these soundtracks. I have personally never seen the movies from this set so can not say how well the music interacts with what's on screen. My opinions will be based on stand alone listing. Disc 1 starts off with twangy music that could possibly be played on a shamisen or koto. Track 2 is a vocal sung by children with no instrumental accompaniment. Most of the rest of the tracks for "Gonza A Spear Man" are either suspenseful tunes or traditional sounding string music. I can find very little info on "A Boy Named Hiroshima" but it seems to be a popular piece to play in Japan and may have been among Toru Takemitsu's last compositions. The music is pleasant enough to listen to. The "Onimaru" tracks contain some drumming as well as woodwind instruments. The music to "Black Rain" is slow and sad and in spots a bit repetitious. "Rikyu" on Disc 2 didn't do much for me and was hard to listen to as stand alone music. The tracks to "Basara, The Princess Goh" were slightly better to listen to on their own but for the most part were pretty bland, suffered from repetition and wasn't all that different from the earlier tracks on the disc. By the time I got to disc 3 on this set I was numb and had a hard time staying awake. This disc was full of more of the same with the exception of the tracks to "Rising Sun". They were fun and had a definite different pace and style than the rest of the tracks on the CD. I enjoyed this section the best. Track 13 sounded very familiar but I wasn't able to put my finger on it. As with other discs in these sets, the music is a mixed bag. Some works well to just listen to and the rest hopefully works better with the movies they are featured in. I guess what surprised me overall about most of these sets was that most of the music was slow and mellow without the great variety found by composers like Akira Ifukube and Masaru Satoh. Most of Toru Takemitsu's music was kind of bland and had a lot of sameness to it. Almost nothing in the way of fast paced music or marches. Nothing that you wouldn't want to listen to but also nothing much you would come back to for repeated listenings. |
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Complete Takemitsu Edition 4 : Music For Movies 2 [4]
Disc 1 (STZ-42)
Disc 2 (STZ-43)
Disc 3 (STZ-44)
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