Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996)
"Rain Tree Sketch II"
"Les Yeux Clos II"
"Rain Tree Sketch"
"Les Yeux Clos"
Pièces pour piano pour enfants
"Piano Distance"
"Uninterrupted Rests"
Litany
Romance
"Der Brauwer:Something, Something, 'n' Rain 'n' Such"

Lukas Huisman, piano

Prolifique compositeur de musique de films (plus de 100 partitions) de réalisateurs aussi fondamentaux qu’Ozu et Mizoguchi, Tôru Takemitsu voit sa notoriété s’internationaliser au fil de l’intérêt marqué par Igor Stravinsky pour son Requiem pour orchestre à cordes (1957) et de sa rencontre avec John Cage en 1964 - qui déterminera le compositeur à intégrer dans son écriture des éléments de sa propre culture. Cette intégrale, exécutée par le talentueux et belge Lukas Huisman, présente, en ordre chronologique inverse, le parcours de Takemitsu : du nationalisme des débuts (Romance) à la maturité (Les Yeux Clos), en passant par la période expérimentale (Pïano Distance, où se fait entendre l’Anton Webern non sériel, ou For Away, aux textures influencées par Luciano Berio ou Karlheinz Stockhausen), l’âme de Claude Debussy sous-tend l’attention portée, à la manière impressionniste, à la couleur, la texture, l’ombre et la lumière et le cœur d’Olivier Messiaen nourrit la nature parfois mystérieuse et spirituelle de ses pièces pour piano. Sélectionnée par l’interprète pour ses points communs avec l’écriture de Takemitsu, Something, Something. 'n' Rain 'n' Such (2015) de Jeroen De Brauwer, auteur du livret, clôt un disque riche et apaisé. (Bernard Vincken)

Although the composer once admitted that he took the title for Rain Tree Sketch from a can of shaving foam, the piece and several others in this invaluable collection share a watery theme which links them back to the music of Debussy as well as the more obvious influence of Messiaen. This collection of Takemitsu’s piano music is filled with a quizzical air and often touches of oblique humour, as though someone is smiling, somewhere. With warm, softly resounding chords and pitter-pattering melodic motifs above, Takemitsu’s piano so often evokes rain gently falling on earth and leaves. There are bright, brisk flashes of light as well as a pervasive undertone of melancholy, which in a work such as Les Yeux Clos can be accounted for by the work’s nature as a memorial to a friend. The poetic title of For Away is matched by the distant reverie of its notes: ‘my expression of extolment,’ according to the composer, ‘and an offering to the Galaxy of Life – a galaxy that is not the sole domain of mankind.’ This is among the most harmonically spare and experimental works on the album, whereas Litany (written in memory of Michael Vyner, the founder of the London Sinfonietta) draws inspiration from Eastern modes as well as their reinterpretation at the hands of Debussy and Messiaen. Perhaps the boldest piece Takemitsu wrote for piano is Piano Distance, which is notated without a clear metre in the hyper-distilled style of Webern. Born in 1987, the Belgian pianist Lukas Huisman has made a speciality of new music, studying with the likes of Ian Pace and Geoffrey Douglas Madge. Through these and other teachers he has immersed himself in the complex worlds of Brian Ferneyhough and Kaiksohru Sorabji, among others, requiring a phenomenal technique as well as an appetite for the unfamiliar and challenging.