Toru Takemitsu Composition Award

Hello to everybody. Just before I start talking about the pieces, I’d like to say just how fantastically and beautifully I’ve been being looked after – me and my wife Rachel. Everybody at Tokyo Opera City Cultural Foundation has been so wonderful and warm. I love being in Tokyo, I love being in Japan. I also want to mention just the fabulous performances I had on Wednesday with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, but also with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra today who were fantastic. They played so beautifully, and it was so great. And this hall, the acoustics in this hall are so good. It’s great for the composers to hear their pieces in it.
So I just want to talk about the 100-odd scores I had to look through. This was very hard – I think for all judges. And what I would say generally is that the four finalists here stood out for me very clearly. I was looking for clarity above all, really. I found some of the scores were so dense that it was very hard to make any sense of them, but these four here really stood out.
And just as a note, I'd like to say that it's funny that I’m a judge really, because I’ve hardly ever won any prizes. It’s funny that I’m not a prizewinner – well not prizewinner because I don’t go in for competitions. So I have real sympathy, and I feel very nervous about giving out such prizes. So I do feel greatly for these four composers here. It’s very hard and I know people always say that, but it is very hard to pick, but I have to because that’s my job, I suppose.

So now we’ll talk about the individual composers in the order of the concert.

Alessandro Adamo’s Parenthesis, the first piece. I love the extrovert quality of this piece. It was actually very optimistic and happy which is not what you always get with new pieces. I liked the jazziness in it and almost filmic in some ways, in a good way, but also optimistic and propulsive which is the thing I really enjoyed.

Okay, and now to Jose Luis Valdivia Arias’s piece, Al-Zahra. This was very playful piece. By the way, all four composers, I should say, orchestrate really brilliantly. This is a thing I really value. All four of you did this which meant a lot to me. Also, I found this piece very playful and I found the use of modern vernacular – like popular type things – very clever and the way it was distorted was very special I thought. It really made me smile. Also a bit unhinged, which I loved.

So on to Giovanni Liguori’s piece, Hypnos. This was, I hope you won’t mind me saying, the darkest piece – I mean it as a compliment. I thought it was quite Italian as well which I also like. I love Italian music. It was sort of nightmarish world. Again beautifully scored, and this is one of the first pieces I read actually when I was looking at the scores and I always knew it would be one of the finalists. It has a sort of Italianate quality of loving sounds, very beautiful sounds.

And lastly on to Jingyu Chen’s Nebula. This piece is, again, very beautifully scored, like everything. This had something that I found very touching. I didn’t see that when I selected the piece – I knew it was a strong piece but I didn't see that. That’s the thing about reading scores. With all these pieces it comes off the page when you actually hear it with the orchestra. It’s a very interesting skill – and this sounds almost derogatory but it’s not – to almost be sentimental but not quite. And that’s a really hard thing to do, and she does it really well.
So there was something very touching, and actually quite moving about some of the chords. I loved harmony. I found that both in the rehearsal and in the performance, and I think the last section is very special, the final bars are beautifully paced.

Now for the announcement of the prizes. In third place, Alessandro Adamo, Parenthesis. I decided to award joint second place. This will be Giovanni Liguori, Hypnos and Jose Luis Valdivia Arias, Al- Zahra. First Prize to Jingyu Chen’s Nebula. Congratulations.

Thank you, brilliant. So, I know what it’s like as a composer and I know how hard it is to compose noncommercial music in a way. I wish them luck and I hope to meet them in the profession. I know I will, actually. I found this very hard, but I really hope they will get something from this. I found the performances were fantastic and Yoichi Sugiyama the conductor was great too. I have to announce that everybody gets equal money. So ¥750,000 each. I thought this was the fairest thing to do. This was the hardest thing to do when I was choosing. Thank you.

Edited by Tokyo Opera City Cultural Foundation