Progetto Martha Argerich

italiano

Works

Toru Takemitsu

Uninterrupted Rests

 

Toru Takemitsu (or, more in keeping with Japanese usage, Takemitsu Toru), who was born in Tokyo in 1930 and died in his native city at the age of sixty-six, in 1996, was the most important Japanese composer of the twentieth century. Essentially self-taught, Takemitsu drew inspiration from Western – especially French – music and refused any hint of contamination with the musical traditions of his native country, which he fundamentally rejected. Uninterrupted Rests is perhaps the best known of his piano compositions. This three-movement work, written between 1952 and 1959, was inspired by a poem by the Japanese poet Tagikuchi Shuzo. It is a fundamentally static, meditative piece in which silence and pauses (musical rests) acquire value and significance by limning a sound-landscape that is rapt and drenched in melancholy; especially in the middle movement (“Quietly and with a cruel reverberation”), this melancholy takes on the sharp outlines of a sought-after minimalism.

1. Slowly, sadly and as if to converse
2. Quietly and with a cruel reverberation
3. A song of love

Performers

Performance