Many of the 11 solo piano works recorded here, particularly Piano Distance, For Away, the two Les Yeux Clos, and the two Rain Tree Sketches, have been performed enough to have moved from being novelties to being part of the standard repertoire of twentieth century piano music. One of the values of this extraordinarily fine collection is the perspective it offers on the span of the composer's career -- the program is organized chronologically and ranges from Takemitsu's first surviving piano piece, written when he was 19, to ...
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Many of the 11 solo piano works recorded here, particularly Piano Distance, For Away, the two Les Yeux Clos, and the two Rain Tree Sketches, have been performed enough to have moved from being novelties to being part of the standard repertoire of twentieth century piano music. One of the values of this extraordinarily fine collection is the perspective it offers on the span of the composer's career -- the program is organized chronologically and ranges from Takemitsu's first surviving piano piece, written when he was 19, to his last, written in 1992. As a sort of appendix, the collection ends with two children's pieces and Litany, a 1989 reworking of two pieces he wrote in 1950. What's perhaps most astonishing about this survey is the light it casts on the consistency of Takemitsu's aesthetic ideals. While his compositional technique developed considerably and branched into a variety of directions, the germ of his artistic core -- a reverence for silence; an unhurried, unforced approach to letting...
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