Toru Takemitsu Composition Award

In previous years, I have attended the final concerts of the Toru Takemitsu Composition Award as a member of the audience and enjoyed myself relaxedly, but this time it was very hard and I couldn't just enjoy. Taking part as the judge this year, I have found for the first time that the people of the Tokyo Opera City Cultural Foundation are so very kind to the finalists. All the finalists are cordially invited to Japan, staying at a first-rate hotel and having excellent Japanese food, and best of all, the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra are playing the music so very beautifully and Maestro Totsuka is studying the score very hard and patiently rehearsing with the orchestra.
When I was younger, at rehearsals with orchestras in particular, some musicians were mean to me and wouldn't listen to whatever I said, but this time the orchestra members were very gentle and also disciplined, and were listening to what all the young composers were saying and patiently rehearsing the difficult parts as well. As the final concert of a competition, I think this is the best in the world in terms of the quality of the music actually played. If I had been thirty years younger, I would have liked to apply for this competition and possibly be selected and have my piece played.
So firstly, I would like to thank all these people: Maestro Naohiro Totsuka, all the members of the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra and all the staff of the Tokyo Opera City Cultural Foundation. Thank you to you all.

So now, piece by piece, I would like to add some comments on the works performed today.
The work by Mr. Masato Kimura has a clear musical concept and from the first note to the last, it is the music that the composer really wants to listen to. His music reminds me of Asian ink painting and landscape painting using light brushstrokes and with lots of beautiful gradations, but more than that, he has a sound, a sonority that he wants to pursue and he is on a serious quest for this sound. The most striking part I felt reading the score and listening to the music of this composer is that he has the sound, he really wants the particular sound, whereas with some young composers today, I wonder if they really have their own sound world.
The title of his piece I do hope to sleep in the silent universe means something, something that he wants to make real which has impressed me. What I found most excellent in the work was that in the first section titled "Silence", there was subtle harmony throughout, very, very quiet, almost inaudible, and repeated notes layered in that quietude, but if you listen to it carefully you could find various sounds in that quietude. Constructing the music centred on sonority itself reminds me of Edgar Varese. If Varese had been interested in Miyamoto Musashi, he might have written this kind of music.
If I may say for his future, his work could do with a little more complex structure in terms of harmony and time, and then his sound world will function better. Otherwise, there is a little danger that his sound might not reach the heart of other people and it may be taken as a design or as decorative music. Also there were some problems with his notation which caused some trouble with the musicians.

Next, WARAI by Ms. Shiori Usui. When I first read this score, I thought that the work must be by a crazy British or a very clever American male composer. Therefore, I was very surprised to find out that in fact the composer was a young female Japanese composer. Her work is the most outstanding in the idea and was the most adventurous and experimental score in this year's competition. I have to note that she has the courage to go into to that adventure. She also has technique in writing the score, which was meticulous and very well written. Because of the various extended techniques used, when I read the score, I couldn't perfectly imagine what kind of sound will come out of the score. I think it was the most difficult for the players to perform out of the four pieces performed today. As a result, there were some very successful parts, while some other parts were not as successful as the composer might have expected. The problem with this work was that the material is too various and too rich, and the concentration of the whole piece was somewhat sacrificed. With more limited materials but with richer development, and the music would have been even more interesting and the "laughter (WARAI)" would have been even richer and louder. However this composer has a great talent with her liberated mind and generous freedom and she has a great future.

The third piece Mano d'erba by Mr. Federico Gardella was musically the most perfect of the works performed today. It has a beautifully restrained poetry and there was no sound that was meaningless. The number of notes is few compared with some other more colorful and elaborate scores and it may seem at first sight a little monotonous, but then you find meaning in each single sound. It is very well thought out and also it is the sound the composer really wants to listen to. Also, I think performers find pleasure in playing this kind of music. Maybe in the works of Mr. Kimura and Ms. Usui, the orchestral players couldn't really understand what they were doing. Even if we can make great sounds in music, each orchestral player should have the pleasure of playing his or her own part. If I may say one thing to this composer, maybe he should be more crazy like Ms. Usui and then his world will be more adventurous. This I have to admit I have to say to myself too.

The final work today, un œuvre pour l'écho des rêves (II) by Mr. Ioannis Angelakis, was a very lively work by a young genius, just 23 years old. His music reminds me of young Mendelssohn's sonority, and it is the type of music only young talented person can write. Passage after passage there was creativity and musicianship, and on every page. Furthermore, he has musical depth and I was often very struck by his music. However, as a composer, he doesn't quite have the finished touch yet and sometimes the ideas are too rich and the musical spring is too productive for one composition to support, so there was small room for improvement. If he can edit the beauty of the details with more control, his work will be even more wonderful.