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Hisaishi rundown post #8 - 1998-99: Fireworks, Piano Stories 3, Kikujiro, Works 2 [EDITED]

Hisaishi rundown post #8 - 1998-99: Fireworks, Piano Stories 3, Kikujiro, Works 2 [EDITED]
JBlough
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Thursday, November 2, 2023 (5:40 a.m.) 

Last post - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=128645
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Fireworks / HANA-BI (1998) - ****½

Sonatine may have gotten noticed in some corners of the world (Quentin Tarantino was a fan), but it was Fireworks that turned Takeshi Kitano into a internationally renowned filmmaker, winning the award for best film at the Venice Film Festival in September 1997 as well as praise from renowned Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, though neither helped it become a significant commercial success when it came out in Japan the following January. With their 1996 movie Kids Return, Kitano and Hisaishi had given us a score that was good and blessed with a terrific main theme, but also a tad familiar in its constructs. Thankfully, Fireworks would avoid any sense of redundancy with their past efforts.

The composer’s trademark piano was kept around, as were some electronics and sampled drums that were typical of Kitano collaborations, though those latter aspects were actually minimized here. For the first time in their relationship, the composer seemed to have an actual budget at his disposal, and the focus of the soundscape is more on a midsized string ensemble (the same group used in the opening track of Parasite Eve), acoustic guitar, the occasional woodwind soloist, and - not heard in a Hisaishi score since The Drifting Classroom in 1987 - a harmonica. Stylish, elegant, and with a hint of melancholy, the Fireworks score was the first work the composer did for a Kitano film that could be easily recommended to fans of his more melodic Studio Ghibli works. Even some of its more dour string passages aren’t entirely dissimilar from such passages in Princess Mononoke, which he probably worked on around the same time.

It’s hard to pick a favorite among A Scene at the Sea, Sonatine, and Fireworks. All three scores have very different themes, soundscapes, and moods - yet all three create an equally indelible impression and reward repeat listens. Either way, you can’t lose. At the time, with Fireworks securing multiple Japan Academy Prize nominations at the 1999 ceremony and getting Hisaishi another win, it seemed like this director/composer partnership also couldn’t lose and that Kitano’s career as a director would continue to be ascendant. Within five years, neither would be true anymore.

Score album - https://open.spotify.com/album/66oaP7Ksqdzch5FyySbCV1?si=z0jfGxc_R52qFEYBqzOivw
1998 concert performance - https://open.spotify.com/track/0lUJyiNakaWjJ8rHD0qKoS?si=1f23935941e042de
Piano Stories III track - https://open.spotify.com/track/7JzqLAJNYBfD1aZZJ3EGKZ?si=e1e2d48d22914237

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Nostalgia: Piano Stories III (1998) - ****½

Discovery #25.

Done somewhat in the style of Piano Stories II, with the composer on piano often surrounded by a small ensemble of various soloists, this CD introduced the knockout piece Nostalgia and served as the album debut of Cinema Nostalgia, an achingly romantic piece that was used to introduce the Friday Roadshow movie program on the Nippon television station in Japan. It also introduced the jazz band presentation of the love theme from Porco Rosso that became more famous when it was used to represent the score at the 2008 Budokan concert, though here its performance is a bit more relaxed. Unique among his studio albums at the time was the inclusion of two covers of pieces by other composers, one being Nino Rota’s theme from the 1960 crime film Purple Noon and the other from an opera by Camille Saint-Saëns.

The album is also - along with a later concert album - the only place you can readily find anything orchestral from the 1998 film Diary of Early Winter Shower, the composer’s final team-up with director Shin'ichirô Sawai, who’d used Hisaishi on five earlier films (including 1991’s The Passage to Japan, which never received a score album release). If you like John Barry’s sad, slow music for strings and piano, then this track will be worth seeking out.

Piano Stories III doesn’t quite have the home run frequency of Piano Stories II, but it’s still a marvelous release. Fans of the innocence evoked by James Horner’s piano writing will likely get a kick out of Journey, the album’s second track.

Cinema Nostalgia was also dedicated to the memory of Yoshifumi Kond&#333;, a lead animator at Studio Ghibli seen as a potential heir to Miyazaki who tragically passed away in early 1998 at the age of only 47.

Album - https://open.spotify.com/album/4Z1qtLN27lY8ot9UhlXGWr?si=cxpEFQIVTiKLdi6a91uxmA
NTV Friday Roadshow opening - https://youtu.be/lG3FhBtVgPc?si=BeH33ns4IQhlejXB

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The Universe Within III: The Human Genome (1999) - ***½

Discovery #26.

Seasoned Universe Within listeners (if they even existed) may have been surprised to hear this score’s album kick off not with minimalist electronics but instead with a playful orchestral tune backed by pop percussion. As with Fireworks the prior year, the composer’s stature seems to have helped afford him a reasonable budget for instrumental players. In a handful of tracks, the album has the kind of stylish mix of strings, brass, and piano that were really only being exhibited in David Arnold’s Bond scores at the time, while others suggest some of the rhythmic quirkiness and world music fusions of Thomas Newman’s later scores. There are still plenty of synthetic sequences that defined the earlier TV specials though, and while the work is a vast improvement on the listening experiences of The Human Body and The Human Brain & Mind it still tops out as a somewhat minor Hisaishi accomplishment, though still a surprisingly engaging one. The opening piece Gene, the exultant Choral for Gene that closes the first volume, and the mix of A Gift from Parents that ends the second volume should be mandatory listening for any fan of the composer.

Vol. 1 - https://open.spotify.com/album/3nBFKmxx6oofMMWVVSEoRo?si=OfN5szrSTbKwiuDKYFuXmQ
Vol. 2 - https://open.spotify.com/album/37cWua2VK88SOFFuWgz5Zf?si=k6ySiZZBQsa5Ctwc3rpHHA

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Kikujiro / Kikujir&#333; no Natsu (1999) - ****

Takeshi Kitano pivoted to more lighthearted fare with this tale of a gambler who takes a youngster on a road trip to try to find the kid’s long-vanished mother. The film didn’t achieve anywhere near the acclaim that Fireworks did, but it did result in one of the most enduring themes from Hisaishi: Summer, a seemingly effortless evocation of innocence on the move that has factored into numerous albums and concerts since - including one by a string quartet that I attended in Chicago last year where Summer was the only live action film piece to make the program. The composer’s occasional use of plucked pizzicato strings around this idea continues some of the feel of Fireworks, but otherwise this melody and its variations on the score album are about as far removed from the new age A Scene at the Sea and the almost avant-garde Sonatine as one can get with the kind of music budget usually afforded to Kitano’s films.

Those discovering the album now might be surprised to learn that more than just the oft-performed Summer comprises the work, as there’s also a warm secondary Kindness theme and another lovely melody for the boy’s mother, the latter getting a particularly affecting cello solo at the start of The Rain. Aside from a few diversions including a synth heartbeat effect in Night Mares, the score doesn’t stray far from its warmhearted path, and some are bound to find the easygoing listening experience a tad one note. But the film needed something simpler and almost childlike at times, and Summer was perhaps the composer’s catchiest melody since My Neighbor Totoro. The score should have immense appeal for those who love music that - in the tradition of French film composer Georges Delerue - wears its heart on its sleeve.

Kikujiro got Hisaishi his second consecutive win at the Japan Academy Prize awards for best score, making it five of the last ten years that he’d been recognized by the organization (covering films from 1990, 1991, 1992, 1998, and 1999).

Album - https://open.spotify.com/album/4lizcoUr7yhsaM79lOtgs9?si=nCgNSMXxQ4GjiJX7N3Lv4Q
2000 Shoot the Violist Summer - https://open.spotify.com/track/410JN06fuWcKX5s4GmQGCB?si=8649fb35f0f947da
Summer piano solo in concert - https://youtu.be/J7or0noYfMA?si=cuBWuDNyd_nAU05o
Summer ensemble in concert - https://youtu.be/EpbP9ooDqFw?si=S6TQWOePAkRl94IA
2010 Melodyphony Summer - https://open.spotify.com/track/2Cxe8qnbsyeXCOpNg05KVl?si=2eac9d9101a14b89

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Works II: ’98 Orchestra Nights (1999) - ****½

This covered at least one concert event in 1998 - and probably more, given the album’s subtitle and the fact that two different orchestras (the Tokyo City Philharmonic Orchestra at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space and the Kansai Philharmonic Orchestra at their usual Osaka Symphony Hall location) are credited. Even with occasional venue noise, including an errant cough, the recording and performance are stellar, both a notable step up from Hisaishi’s earlier concert album, 1992’s Symphonic Best Selection. There’s little that’s truly new; three arrangements were in fact already covered on Works I. And some of the composer’s stylistic tendencies were becoming a bit familiar; you may notice how the opening of Cinema Nostalgia and the main theme from Fireworks sound a bit similar.

But the album remains a terrific sampler of the composer’s works from that time and a great starting point for any exploration of his output, with material from the Princess Mononoke suite, Kitano films, and Piano Stories albums all covered, some of it greatly expanded in scale. It is Hisaishi at his most nostalgic as it has Nostalgia from Piano Stories III, Cinema Nostalgia, and a track from Haruka, Nostalgia. If nothing else, listeners should at least seek out the album for its big arrangement of Asian Dream Song from Piano Stories II, one of his finest accomplishments of the decade.

Album - https://open.spotify.com/album/1v3S0aoWq5xOFZPaOxWPie?si=kro0sP6jSeWuIN9kzavAyw

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The ten best Hisaishi scores of the 80s and 90s
10. Arion
9. Kiki’s Delivery Service
8. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
7. Castle in the Sky (1986 version)
6. Kikujiro
5. Sonatine
4. A Scene at the Sea
3. Fireworks
2. Porco Rosso
1. My Neighbor Totoro

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Next time: The aughts begin with Miyazaki’s triumph and the composer’s first assignments outside of Japan.


(Message edited on Thursday, November 2, 2023, at 5:44 a.m.)


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Hisaishi rundown post #8 - 1998-99: Fireworks, Piano Stories 3, Kikujiro, Works 2
A. Rubinstein
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Sunday, November 5, 2023 (3:27 a.m.) 

Since no one has responded I'll just jump in to say - so it doesn't seem like it went unnoticed - that I really enjoy this rundown. Even as a big Hisaishi fan I discover gems here that I wasn't familiar with, and it's always fun and interesting to read your analyzes of these works.


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Re: Hisaishi rundown post #8 - 1998-99: Fireworks, Piano Stories 3, Kikujiro, Works 2
Riley KZ
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Sunday, November 5, 2023 (2:09 p.m.) 

> Since no one has responded I'll just jump in to say - so it doesn't seem
> like it went unnoticed - that I really enjoy this rundown. Even as a big
> Hisaishi fan I discover gems here that I wasn't familiar with, and it's
> always fun and interesting to read your analyzes of these works.

I'm glad you did cause I somehow missed that post altogether. It's been a really great series!


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Thanks guys! Glad you're liking it. *NM*
JBlough
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Monday, November 6, 2023 (5:14 a.m.) 



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