Oliver Knussen

Editorial Reviews
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Sometimes, even while you are listening, it can be very difficult to understand how Takemitsu created such exquisitely beautiful music using so much dissonance. As the brief Day Signal opens the disc, for example, you're more likely to think of the glory of sunrise than of the discords. And Quotation of Dream, which quotes freely from Debussy's La Mer, is nearly as beautiful as its source. Rather than waste time figuring out how Takemitsu's spacing of notes and imaginative scoring influences our perceptions, it's much more rewarding just to relax and let the music wash over you. Knussen, who leads amazing performances here, has programmed the disc for a continuous listening experience, although the novice should probably listen only to a couple of pieces at one sitting. --Leslie Gerber

Toru Takemitsu: Quotation of Dream (20/21 series) - London Sinfonietta / Oliver Knussen, Music, Toru Takemitsu, Oliver Knussen, Paul Crossley, Peter Serkin, London Sinfonietta, Sebastian Bell, Michael Collins, Andrew Crowley, Gareth Hulse, Joan Atherton, Rebecca Hirsch, Timothy Lines, 20th/21st Century Orchestral Work with Descriptive Title, Chamber, Classical, Classical Composers, Classical Music, Concerto, Concerto for Two Pianos, Orchestral, Orchestral & Symphonic, Polychoral Music For Brass

Toru Takemitsu: Quotation of Dream (20/21 series) - London Sinfonietta / Oliver Knussen
Average customer rating:

More of the bland stagnance of Takemitsu's later symphonic work

Really enjoying this one

A fine collection of late works and an ideal introduction

Another world

Takemitsu draws you into his dream world

Toru Takemitsu: Quotation of Dream (20/21 series) - London Sinfonietta / Oliver Knussen
Oliver Knussen , Paul Crossley , Peter Serkin , London Sinfonietta , Sebastian Bell , Michael Collins , Andrew Crowley , Gareth Hulse , Joan Atherton , Rebecca Hirsch , and Timothy Lines
Manufacturer: Deutsche Grammophon
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: B00000I0L6
Release Date: 1999-02-09

Tracks:

Quotation Of Dream: Day Signal
Quotation Of Dream
Quotation Of Dream: How Slow The Wind
Quotation Of Dream: Twill By Twilight
Quotation Of Dream: Archipelago S.
Quotation Of Dream: Dream-Window
Quotation Of Dream: Night Signal

Amazon.com

Sometimes, even while you are listening, it can be very difficult to understand how Takemitsu created such exquisitely beautiful music using so much dissonance. As the brief Day Signal opens the disc, for example, you're more likely to think of the glory of sunrise than of the discords. And Quotation of Dream, which quotes freely from Debussy's La Mer, is nearly as beautiful as its source. Rather than waste time figuring out how Takemitsu's spacing of notes and imaginative scoring influences our perceptions, it's much more rewarding just to relax and let the music wash over you. Knussen, who leads amazing performances here, has programmed the disc for a continuous listening experience, although the novice should probably listen only to a couple of pieces at one sitting. --Leslie Gerber

Customer Reviews:

More of the bland stagnance of Takemitsu's later symphonic work.......2007-06-03

It's inexplicable that so little of Takemitsu's extraordinary film music has been released in affordable editions outside Japan, while compilations of his boring, overtly derivative late orchestral output have enjoyed inclusion on releases by the likes of DG. Then again, DG hasn't had a good string of releases since the late '70s, so I don't expect too much from that fallen giant.

"Quotation of Dream" is easily one of Takemitsu's worst compositions and an absolute waste of time: a meandering exercise that tediously quotes Debussy's "La Mer" and recycles portions of Takemitsu's own "Dream/Window." Technically, this piece is as expertly constructed as all of Takemitsu's work, but that doesn't make it any less counterfeit of its' source material, or any less embarrassing for it. Why should I listen to this tiresome pablum when the compositions it borrows from are readily available?

"How Slow the Wind," "Twill by Twilight" and "Archipelago S." are typical examples of Takemitsu's late orchestral works: they assume a lovely sound and were composed with ingenious design, but that doesn't make them even remotely interesting or memorable.

There are a few works on this disc that are worth hearing. The aforementioned "Dream/Window" is a brilliant, beautiful twelve-tone composition that's infused with the drifting, dreamlike sonority common of his works - an aesthetic which is almost anathema to the rigorous character of most serialist compositions.
Also notable are "Day Signal" and "Night Signal," a pair of dissonant, evocative fanfares that bookend the album's content. These brass-voiced compositions seem almost facile to the ear at first listen, but repeated plays distinguish the cleverness of these little pieces as antiphonal movements.

None of the negative comments of this review should obscure the fact that Takemitsu was a truly gifted and intuitive composer. But it's inexplicable that so much of his best (and in many cases, most accessible) works of film, piano, chamber and electronic/tape music remain either out of print (often since being released on LP) or entirely unavailable for domestic consumption of his North American and European listeners when the least of his orchestral oeuvre is readily on hand.

There's nothing that I can say against these performances by Knussen conducting the LS. They're excellent, informed executions of mostly mediocre compositions. However, I'd much rather hear Knussen performing the best of his own small (but distinguished) oeuvre!

The production is decent: as transparent and pristine as most of the best digital recordings. These compositions don't demand any venture into extreme registers, but the soft passages are capably, audibly reproduced without any loss of their inherent subtlety.

Really enjoying this one.......2006-04-29

I have only recently begun listening to Takemitsu. Was introduced at a guitar recital. I have been slowly accumulating more of his compositions. For me, this is possibly the best.

Composition intrigues me perhaps more than any other aspect of music, and this fellow was clearly inspired. I would liken his music to that of Alan Hovhaness, but without some of the more brash moments of that composer. I can also hear the influence of Debussy, but Takemitsu takes the listener in many enjoyable directions throughout this CD.

The playing and recording are also top-notch.

A fine collection of late works and an ideal introduction.......2004-12-11

QUOTATION OF DREAM is the first of Deutsche Grammophon's several collections of pieces by late Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, who thankfully has been getting ever-more attention since his untimely death in 1996. Takemitsu was a mainly self-taught composer, and because of this there seems to be little that connects him to his serialism- or minimalism-inspired colleagues. Nevertheless, Takemitsu's own path is fascinating, exploring Japanese and Western compositional principles in isolation and in combination and striving to transcend them both. These pieces, several of them related by shared thematic materials. are lovingly performed by the London Sinfonietta conducted by Oliver Knussen, who was a friend and admirer of Takemitsu.

The disc is framed by two antiphonal fanfares written in 1987, "Day Signal" and "Night Signal", together called "Signals from Heaven". They are closely related, both using dissonance to suggest the changing of the skies, but with one inverted from the other to suggest an opposite tone.

A quip of Takemitsu was "I am self-taught, but I consider Debussy my teacher." The first major work here, "Quotation of Dream - Say sea, take me!" (1991), is a tribute to Debussy using quotations from his "La Mer" as if the composer was trying to recreate the piece he had just woken up from dreaming. The title also refers to its use of some material from "Dream/Window", an earlier composition present on this disc. "Quotation of Dream" is a lovely tribute to the composer's greatest inspiration, but the majority of the work comes only from Takemitsu. His use of a zig-zag of harmony, of orchestral colour that comes forth and recedes like waves is nothing you have ever heard before in orchestral music.

"How Slow the Wind" (1991), inspired by a poem by Emily Dickinson, is rather more brooding. It's most interesting moments occur toward the end, when cascading woodwind sounds and the faintly mechanical notes of two Swiss cowbells transform the work into something different. This is one of Takemitsu's most impressive works,

"Twill by Twillight (in memory of Morton Feldman)" (1988) is an experiment with a musical "tapestry", where a theme "weaves" through the piece. The piece is pretty music, but does little to make itself memorable and for me remains the low point of this collection.

The title of "Archipelago S." for twenty-one players (1993) refers to the landscapes of Seattle, Stockholm, and the islands of the Sato Inland Sea . The piece has an innovative stage layout, with the players grouped into five "islands": a five-person brass group, two mixed seven-piece groups, a clarinet sitting to the right, and a clarinet sitting to the left. The effect is indeed somewhat nautical and this recording exploits the space well.

"Dream/Window" (1985) is probably the most important composition on this disc. Every note of this piece is of the greatest delicacy, and the work as a whole is so crystalline and fragile that one feels one will break it just by listening to it. Though Takemitsu's later works are impressive, they have never seemed to me to acheive the perfection of "Dream/Window". What is surprising is that this work is true twelve-tone music, yet with Takemitsu's skill it does not sound dull or scientific.

If you ever think that modern-classical music is written only by dispassionate ivory-tower robots like Pierre Boulez, the works of Takemitsu will show you that contemporary techniques can, under the right hands, touch the emotions as much as the intellect. While it takes some time to get used to (nearly six months for me), this is probably the single best introduction to the music of Toru Takemitsu. And one should certainly listen to this before getting the other DG "20/21" discs, which are rather more specialised (with, for example, one having traditional Japanese pieces and the other flute and guitar works).

Another world.......2003-10-18

Toru Takemitsu was one of the late 20th century's most individual composers whose scores use primarily the traditional instruments of western classical music. Perhaps in part because he wrote film scores in addition to concert pieces, his art is highly communicative and un-academic. It has the double merit of being about as far as you can get both from gnarly, dissonant modernism and from pretty-pretty New Age ear candy.

Quotation of Dream includes seven pieces from the last decade of Takemitsu's life (he died in 1996), including the premiere recording of the title piece. The disc begins and ends with fanfares that, while perhaps effective as aural bookends, are to my ears undistinguished. The music that lies in between, however, is extraordinarily compelling.

Takemitsu's style in these works is generally meditative, with frequent slow, quiet passages, strings predominating. But there are dramatic incidents and color as well: flaring brass, rising like a mountainous island from a tropical sea; raindrops of chimes; drawn-out woodwind lines weaving sinuously through swirls of massed violins. The music sometimes pivots around silent pauses, like the empty spaces in Zen painting. In Quotation of Dream, twin pianos (played by Paul Crossley and Peter Serkin, respectively) dominate the foreground with gentle cascades of notes while orchestral clouds form in the background.

The musical language is often reminiscent of Debussy and Ravel; in mood (though not in technique) it can resemble the slowest and most mysterious moments in music of the second Viennese school (Schoenberg, Berg, Webern et al.). The subtlety and elusiveness probably owe something to the composer's Japanese heritage. But this is no cut-and-paste job; the overall impression is startlingly original.

I have not read the liner notes, and have no idea of what Takemitsu is trying to "say," or what these scores "mean." I would also suggest that those considerations are pretty irrelevant: the important thing is the sound world that he has created, which is both other-worldly and bracing.

Oliver Knussen, a contemporary British composer and a friend of Takemitsu, conducted the London Sinfonietta in these recordings. It is apparent that that he helped the players, who sound expert, get "inside" the music.

Anyone who already knows and appreciates Takemitsu's sensibility need not hesitate to acquire this disc. It can also be recommended for all but the most determinedly "mostly Mozart" classical devotees.

The presentation is not ideal. Deutsche Grammophon has never excelled at digital recordings, and the sound of this disc, while detailed and transparent, is a bit bright and clinical. The disc is contained in one of those cardboard containers that some labels are now trying to get you to accept in lieu of the standard jewel case because it's cheaper to produce (but not cheaper for you to buy). The atmospheric sepia-toned photo on the cover has a fat round sticker on it that shouts "World Premiere Recording"; if you try to peel off the sticker, it leaves ineradicable shreds. The plastic tray with the central claw ring is glued to the cardboard. Take care not to break the plastic, because there is no way you can replace it.

Takemitsu draws you into his dream world.......2002-04-07

These pieces from Takemitsu's maturity represent the pinnacle of achievement for this gifted composer. Without regard to trends and fashion in contemporary music has has created his own sound universe. A peaceful, yet oddly non-somnolent, serenity informs virtually every bar of these wonderful pieces. The music is beautiful, lush and imaginative at every turn and despite strong ties to the French impressionists it is creative and unique and infused with Takemitsu's personal stamp and his nature-mystical aesthetic. The sound and the performances are first rate and Oliver Knussen must be congratulated on doing such a fine job in bringing these excellent pieces to life. If you love Takemitsu, you will love this CD. If you are new to Takemitsu, this is a wonderful introduction to one of the 20th century's finest composers.
Recommended without reservation.

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