Toru Takemitsu

Charming man, adorable even, Toru Takemitsu was the leading Japanese composer of his day (1930-1996). He came from a very modest family of which his grandmother had been Spanish, a fact of which he was very proud. He told me that he had not heard any Western music until towards the end of the war when he could pick up broadcasts of American dance music in secret while serving as an extremely young soldier. there was also a gramophone lacking a needle so one had to be improvised from a piece of bamboo. The experience in the army he described as 'extremely bitter.' 

After the war Toru worked for the Americans but went down with Tuberculosis for a long time during which he listened to as much Western music as possible. Traditional Japanese music invoked unpleasant memories. At the age of 16, self-taught, he 'began writing music attracted to music itself as one human being. Being in music I found my raison d'etre as a man. Choosing music clarified my identity.' As early as 1948, he became immersed in Electronic Music technology discovering that by co-incidence Pierre Shaeffer was working along the same lines in Paris.

He went on to compose several hundred works, scored more than 90 films and published 20 books. 

In 1958, Stravinsky heard a work by Takemitsu by chance while on a visit to Japan and found it sincere and passionate. He invited Toru to lunch. An unforgettable experience. Soon after Stravinsky returned to the USA, Toru received a commission from the Koussevtsky foundation for which he wrote Dorian Horizon' which was premiered in 1966, conducted by Aaron Copeland with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. 

Musical and personal contact with John Cage resulted in him recognizing the value of his own tradition and subsequently he wondered why his attention hadn't been captured before He went on to become the first Japanese composer fully recognised in the West.

In 1974 we founded a series of concerts we called 'the London Music Digest.' The idea was to give a platform to the pianist Roger Woodward to explore different forms for the 'Piano Recital' whereby other musicians could also be involved and during which we could fill in some gaps in the consciousness of London audiences by bringing them up to date with other centres, notably Paris by the means of one-composer concerts. One of these concerts was devoted to Toru Takemitsu.

In the run-up to this concert there occurred a notable incident. We had invited two Japanese players of traditional instruments to take part in one of the works. Their names are still engraved on my memory. Kinshi Tsuruta and Kazuyo Yokohama who played the Biwa and Shakuhachi respectively. I had arranged to meet them myself from their flight into Heathrow from Tokyo. 

On the day I expected to meet them I received a call from Immigration early in the morning asking if I knew these two people because they had been waiting ever since the previous evening for me to collect them, sitting patiently land-side of LHR Terminal 2 with their luggage at their feet. Somehow I had assumed that if they departed from Tokyo one day they would arrive the next whereas they had taken a flight that got in the same day as their departure thanks to the time difference. The whole thing reminded me of 'Madama Butterfly' and somewhat painfully of the aria 'Un bel di.' I expected fury and recriminations but they couldn't have been nicer.