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Freedom: Piano Stories 4 (2005) - ****
Discovery #35.
This was the first Piano Stories album in seven years, though 2003’s Etude was arguably one in all but name only. The most essential part of it was that it debuted the composer’s lovely, spirited composition for Suntory’s Iyemon green tea drink (his second for the brand) called Oriental Wind, a melody about as catchy as Summer from Kikujiro. Speaking of Summer, the playful piece Spring on this album sounds like a cousin of it - likely no coincidence, given the track name. The tango-like, bandoneon-powered Constriction is also great fun. The album wasn’t quite as magnetic as Piano Stories II, but hearing the composer writing an album in this style again was still like revisiting an old friend.
Album - https://open.spotify.com/album/5y3QOvNMlvamEs4rzua8JV?si=5c-WECfNQJKQK05X0KRXYA
The Suntory commercial - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoGnJ0nIJz0
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Works III (2005) - ****
If you liked Oriental Wind on Piano Stories 4, then only a few months later you got an even better treat: a delightful orchestral arrangement on the first Works album played by the World Dream Orchestra. The composer also revisited the DEAD Suite from Shoot the Violist, though here arranged for a larger ensemble and with two new movements (the gloomy The Abyss and the propulsive Death Pilgrimage) in between d.e.a.d. and Love Song. Bigger isn’t better though, as d.e.a.d. loses the tension of its chamber-like original arrangement, and the sense of catharsis that came from having Love Song play right after d.e.a.d. is also gone. However, the expanded piece still receives a capable performance, and Death Pilgrimage should appeal to anyone who likes the composer’s Da-ma-shi-e in its instrumental incarnations.
The composer had almost nailed down his Howl’s Moving Castle suite by this point; he’d pull a minute out of the middle for the 2008 Budokan suite that would set the template for the work’s live performances going forward. The album closes with about 20 minutes of music from Hisaishi’s new score for the Buster Keaton silent film The General. On the whole, there’s enough on the album for it to earn a solid recommendation, but it remains the least essential of the Works albums.
Album - https://open.spotify.com/album/4anlwrNcoawbMW0MBJe1d4?si=E0GmFdWzSiq3Hr2isuhQVg
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American in Paris (2005) - ****
Discovery #36.
Despite the title, this devotes only about a minute to Gershwin’s famed music. Rather, the album functions as a pops orchestra tribute to the tunes of Cole Porter, Michel Legrand, Francis Lai, and others, with many songs newly arranged by Hisaishi. Expect a pleasant, spirited hour of music, though the inclusion of his theme from Tom Thumb - four years after its release! - makes for an odd programmatic choice in an album otherwise populated by throwback tracks.
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A Chinese Tall Story / Qing dian da sheng (2005) - ***½
This goofy Hong Kong adaptation of the 16th century Chinese novel Journey to the West helmed by Kung Fu Hustle director Jeffrey Lau was a surprise assignment for Hisaishi. “I was taken aback when I first got the script. I found it strange that anyone would want to approach me to write for a comedy. However, having read the screenplay I discovered that beneath the gags lies a very sturdy, moving love story.” The score plays like a muscular extension of the fantastical orchestral style of Spirited Away and Tom Thumb, with a big love theme and a heroic brass melody occasionally supported by an army of pan-Asian sounds. “I consider it a tale representing Eastern cultures. That’s why I never limited myself to just using Chinese instrumentation - you’ll hear a lot of different sounds on it, be it Chinese, Japanese, or even gamelan.” Even an electric guitar and a drum kit rip through the soundscape in one track.
Ultimately, the score is somewhat undone by its themes reappearing in slightly new arrangements but rarely evolving, creating the sense on its album of hearing 30 minutes of ideas dragged into 60 minutes. One has to wonder if Hisaishi’s limited interactions with the filmmakers, including only seeing the director twice, played a part. The score ends up with the opposite problem that Tom Thumb had, the feeling of using your themes too much instead of not using them enough. Still, most listeners should be able to easily assemble a terrific 15-20 minutes of highlights.
Album - https://open.spotify.com/album/2PUfGUkjOd1SPg1xBV1yHy?si=TeDeCSd2SEWaHpDW75OCdg
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Yamato / Otokotachi no Yamato (2005) - *****
Discovery #37 - and the best discovery of this rundown.
This adaptation of a novel about friends serving aboard a doomed World War II battleship was a colossal success in Japan. It made the most money at the domestic box office of any Japanese film released in 2005 and got nine nominations at the 2007 Japan Academy Prize awards. One of those was for Hisaishi’s score, the composer’s first nomination from the association since a wholly undeserved one for Dolls four years earlier. This one, however, was very much deserved, as Yamato was the first of his live action scores to rise to the same echelon as Spirited Away.
In a way, Yamato was Hisaishi’s most Hollywood score to date, with the composer synthesizing a variety of American action music influences into his own identifiable style. Its most rousing moments will undoubtedly appeal to fans of Jerry Goldsmith’s music at its most martial; one recurring militaristic theme is cut from the same cloth as Goldsmith’s scores for Patton and Small Soldiers. Other material continues in the vein of the John Williams-like orchestral reverence the composer toyed with in the prior year’s Howl’s Moving Castle. And the expansive main melody, a more regal cousin of Hans Zimmer’s melodramatic theme from The Rock, is the closest the composer ever came to power anthem territory, though the idea is also effectively translated to more intimate settings.
None of that should suggest the work is heavily derivative or all-over-the-place. Like Porco Rosso over a dozen years earlier, Yamato is a strong example of the composer fusing a variety of influences into a cohesive whole while retaining his own mannerisms - extremely memorable themes, the unmistakable elegance, layered woodwind parts, notable use of counterpoint, and so on. Hisaishi even deployed a vast adult choir for the first time in one of his scores, lending an extra epic heft to a handful of tracks. And the vastly orchestral and expansive dramatic style exhibited here would become a defining feature of many of his notable scores over the next eight years; if you want to understand how we got to better-known works in this style like I Want to Be a Shellfish and Clouds above the Hill, start with this glorious triumph. Few of the composer’s works have ever achieved such floor-shaking volumes.
Album - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAGhGcgrqCSQoNHyXnSANaQUmp-K0VMbT .
Be advised the bookend tracks on the album are pop songs done without Hisaishi’s involvement.
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Psycho Horror Night (2006) - ***½
Discovery #38.
This was the third orchestral pops album featuring the World Dream Orchestra - and the first to feature them in a live concert recording. The night was ostensibly devoted to a night of fearful classical and film music, with the highlight of that material being an orchestral reimagining of Tubular Bells, Mike Oldfield’s piece made famous after its inclusion in The Exorcist. Atypical but welcome choices include Pino Donaggio’s impassioned theme from Dressed to Kill and Charles Gonoud’s playful Funeral March of a Marionette, the latter which certain U.S. listeners may recognize from its appearances in the main titles of the TV show Alfred Hitchcock Presents from the 1950s and 60s.
The album has some odd programmatic decisions though. The famed choral outburst from Carmina Burana appears twice. Only including the Prelude from Psycho feels like a tease. And - as with earlier orchestral pops presentations from the composer and the WDO - the album includes some Hisaishi scores that don’t fit snugly with the rest of the surrounding material. A Princess Mononoke suite previews the structure that would inform the work’s performance at the famed Budokan concert two years later, though at least the demon god material is akin to what you’d expect to be on an album called Psycho Horror Night. Containing nothing horror-like is the conclusive twenty minutes of music from Yamato, though I suppose that’s forgivable as a) it was music from a hit film in Japan that made most of its money in theaters that year and b) the album remains the only way to legitimate way hear anything from that stellar score in the U.S.
It’s a good album on the whole, though it’s less tonally consistent than American in Paris and far less sensationally entertaining than World Dreams. For reasons unknown, Psycho Horror Night would be the last such orchestral pops album Hisaishi would do with the group; later albums would be dedicated to the composer’s own film and concert compositions or other modern classical works. A 2007 “best of” CD compiled tracks from this album, World Dreams, and American in Paris along with a concert performance of Hisaishi’s four-minute Waltz II Suite For Jazz Orchestra No.2.
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The Sun Also Rises (2007) - ***½
This film had nothing to do with Ernest Hemingway’s famed novel of the same name but was instead China’s answer to the “various interconnected stories” movies that were somewhat in vogue in this decade (think Crash or Babel), directed by the man who would later play the gun-toting Baze in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Hisaishi’s heavily thematic score mixes an orchestra with a grab bag of solo contributors (Irish harp, tin whistle, viola da gamba) for a work that’s alternatingly elegant and sad. A prevailing sense of repetition is the only thing that holds it back from a higher rating.
Album - https://open.spotify.com/album/3Wfc3TnlbsjOGmskh6y8xp?si=QuPBvOKcSQ6RLb927epqnQ
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A Tale of Mari and Three Puppies / Mari to koinu no monogatari (2007) - ***
Discovery #39.
A dramatization of how a family and their dogs survived a major earthquake in 2004, this film was one of the more successful Japanese films at the 2007 domestic box office. Hisaishi’s score is a capable continuation of his warmhearted orchestral style from this decade, full of his usual rich orchestrations and sprightly energy, though it’s not among his more distinctive efforts. One of the themes is reminiscent of For You from Samurai Kids, while a rare moment of action wasn’t terribly dissimilar from what he wrote for a miniseries also airing in 2007. Some echoey synthetic voices in the back half of the album constitute a unique element in the soundscape, but otherwise this is a surprisingly nondescript score, though also an inoffensive one. It does appear to have introduced the composer to pop singer Ayaka Hirahara, who performs the end credits song adaptation of his main theme; the singer would be featured in both Spirited Away pieces performed at the following year’s epic Studio Ghibli concert at the Budokan arena.
Now in the Wind credits song - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYDi2oEi0zk
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The Legend / Taewangsasingi, sometimes subtitled The Story of the First King’s Four Gods (2007) - ****
The Legend was an ratings juggernaut in South Korea, with around one-third of viewing households turning in each week for a tale of god myths and imperial dynasties. With 24 episodes to score, Hisaishi likely didn’t write most of his music to picture; a number of track names read like Character Theme (Comic) and Character Theme (Melodramatic) and so on, and the few scenes I’ve seen suggest the music was tracked in. Given how it was written, The Legend is arguably one of the few scores that can appeal to most of the composer’s fan camps. Do you like the melodic side from Miyazaki films? Revel in the vaulting glory of Damdeok’s Theme and the melancholy beauty of Sujini’s Theme. Do you like the orchestral might increasingly on display this decade? Jam to the valiant brass of Victory (in 11/8 time!), the booming percussion of Sacred War and War of the Gods, and the grand Destiny and Unity. Do you miss his contemporary scores? Delight in the anachronistic feel of Time Flows By and the whiff of A Scene at the Sea in Sujini’s Theme (Love Theme). Do you like how the composer more readily leveraged Eastern instruments after Princess Mononoke? Listen to…like…the whole thing.
Close to two hours of music - including multiple pop song versions of Hisaishi’s themes - was issued across two volumes released in late 2007 and early 2008. The whole program exposes more weaknesses than strengths, such as redundant character theme tracks, stylistic inconsistencies, a handful of unexceptional passages, and the shrug-inducing pop songs. And despite often having the composer’s usual rich orchestration The Legend doesn’t have the earlier compositional complexity of, say, Spirited Away, a score that by comparison offers more riches with new listens. But a score you can take at face value can still be tons of fun, and a mighty 45-60 minutes can easily be assembled across the two releases.
Opening - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7fmnGhFc8A
Sacred War - https://youtu.be/-_lz6yvAOAw?si=-wge5Qm7rghGd7q1
First Love - https://youtu.be/noTleyq3Gcc?si=i0A0Iz4oBHJIBevR
Victory - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLw2BXx_AKQ
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Next time: A year for the ages.
(Message edited on Monday, November 13, 2023, at 5:34 a.m.)
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