Toru Takemitsu Composition Award

4 Finalists selected for Toru Takemitsu Composition Award 2025
[Judge: Georg Friedrich Haas]

05 Dec, 2024

Georg Friedrich Haas, judge of the Toru Takemitsu Composition Award 2025, has chosen the following 4 orchestral works out of 137 entries from 33 countries (Countries & Regions) eligibly accepted by 30 September 2024. Screening was done with the anonymous scores having only their titles.
These 4 nominated works will be performed on 25 May 2025 at the Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall : Takemitsu Memorial for Mr. Haas’s final judgement. Here is the list of finalists in order of their entry.

Applications for 2025（PDF/126KB）

Year 2025 Georg Friedrich Haas (Austria)

Finalists (in order of entry)

Comments for the Final / as a single judge
for the Toru Takemitsu Composition Award 2025

Tidal Lock for orchestra

Far away, Pluto and its companion Charon orbit the sun in an eccentric ecliptic orbit. The gravitational forces between these two celestial bodies are enormous - comparatively much stronger than those between the earth and the moon, for example. This is because they are very close to each other and the difference in their masses is relatively small.
Sometimes the tensions are released in a breaking: from quiet hairline cracks on the surface to a massive burst. Sometimes a tremor, a vibration, .... spreads out - like waves on a frozen lake: Tidal Lock.
The music succeeds in translating these phenomena into sound in an artistic way. Unisons or octaves with quarter-tone shades, rotten tonal chord remnants, sparsely used multiphonics - metaphors of fragility, distance, coldness.
Whether this work is based on mathematical/physical analyses of the surface movements of Pluto and Charon, or whether the composer composed the sounds and tones freely, simply inspired by the dictates of astronomy - this cannot be determined from the score alone. But it is irrelevant.
What is relevant, however, is what the composer wrote at the end of the introductory text to Tidal Lock: During the process of tidal bulging, tidal dragging, and eventually tidal locking, small and romantic poems are written in the vast universe.
The position of the orchestral instruments is composed and forms an integral part of the composition. But it is not the case that in a simple illustration, for example, Pluto is shown on the left (or in front) and Charon on the right (or behind). The movements of the sounds are freely composed. They are elements of musical expression. Just as pitch, volume and timbre are elements of musical expression.

MATSURU for orchestra

A tremendous work.
Composed with an obsession for detail.
At the beginning, we hear a spatial arrangement: pianos and harps at the front on the right and left edges of the stage, the percussionists at the very back. Harp chords tuned in quarter tones mix with the vibrating sound of the metallophones. This spatial effect is repeated later. And once (after a huge crescendo that suddenly breaks off) a lonely soprano saxophone sounds for a few breaths from the back of the audience area.
All string instruments have G strings - just in only two different octave positions. The composer uses this fact to get different overtones of one and the same fundamental tone played on the G strings by ALL string instruments at the same time. This creates a lot of energy.
The orchestra musicians also use their voices effectively and dramatically. I don't know what the words that are shouted mean, I don't know who the people are whose names are mentioned. But I feel the musical power behind it. According to the electronic dictionary, “matsuru” translated into English means “enshrine” or “to anchor.” The work describes in impressive terms how a person - a composer - tries to somehow anchor himself in this rushing world.

The Play for Skin and Fabric for 2 orchestras

Sequences of perfect fifths are stacked, one on top of each other. Nothing more. In simple rhythms.
Sometimes the fifths are replaced by perfect fourths. And sometimes it shifts by one or more octaves.
Every now and then simple diatonic melodies appear - in parallel chords of perfect fifths stacked on top of each other.
Everything starts with the piano. If the piano part were even remotely virtuosic, you could call it a piano concerto. But it is not.
The orchestra is divided into a right and a left half. The piano is in the middle. The two orchestra groups are arranged exactly as mirror images.
The spatial position of the sounds is a substantial part of the composition.
At first glance, you might think The Play for Skin and Fabric is an amateurish piece of work. But the precision of the instrumentation, the sophistication of the spatial arrangements, the varied elaborations within this limited musical material and the carefully placed deviations from the pattern make it clear that the work must be based on strong artistical sound imaginations.
When listening to the score, I was immediately captivated by the magic of these crystal-clear structures.
I see The Play for Skin and Fabric in the tradition of Arvo Pärt and Steve Reich, who found their “new music” at places where no one would have expected anything new.
The work sounds as if Morton Feldman would have been caught in a jungle of pure fifths and fourths - and could only move forward in diatonic steps and simple rhythms.
The piece is very difficult. It requires precise intonation – within perfect fourths and fifths the listeners’ ears only tolerate deviations to a very small extent. Rhythmic precision and beautiful sound are indispensable prerequisites for a successful performance.
This piece is inspired by the philosophy and work of Issey Miyake (1938-2022), one of Japan's most iconic fashion designers.

Diptych for orchestra

This work impresses with the clarity of its “Klang”- language. The composer has the intention and the ability to compose sounds consciously - without falling into the clichés of "modern" orchestration languages. The musical units are treated as valuable identities, each of which creates its own collective cosmos. Through repetition, their beauty is made permanently conscious. You know: what you have heard will return. But you don't know where.
Diptych begins with a network of short lines - like scratch marks. The strings begin with a forte unison that glides downwards, becomes quieter, blurs - colored by wind instruments.
The composer uses large-scale contrasts in the dynamics and in the duration of the formal sections.
The slow tempo first part is followed by an even slower tempo of the second part. The motif of a quiet chord repetition is set in slow quintuplets. Pause. Repetition. Pause. This motif is played a total of 16 times. The first insertion is loud, then the dynamics remain in the piano range, only rarely accentuated by isolated sforzati. Just before the end, the catastrophe happens: a brutal gesture, culminating in a whip crack. Then we hear microtonal vibrations in the high notes. And the quintuplet motif appears again.
The orchestra is small: only 8 winds, only 5 brass. 2 percussions, timpani, harp, piano. The composer does not give any information about the size of the string orchestra. But it should be reduced to at least to 12 10 8 6 4.
In terms of style, Diptych combines minimalism and expressionism. In case the orchestra creates precise, beautiful sounds and performs a dynamically differentiated interpretation - this work will be very impressive.

New York, Nov 24
Georg Friedrich Haas