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Another Piano Stories: The End of the World (2009) - ****
A largely score-centric Piano Stories album, this included new arrangements of pieces from three of Hisaishi’s 2008 films as well as The Legend. The album also debuted the fun tango-like track Woman as well as the impressively agitated The End of the World. Tied together by a repeated piano motif, that latter work’s only weakness is the odd choice to have its fourth and final movement be a warped cover of the 1960s Skeeter Davis song of the same name. Unlike Hisaishi’s DEAD Suite, which wasn’t quite as engaging when rearranged for larger forces, The End of the World gained new power when its three instrumental movements were beefed up for a full orchestra and choir on an album released later in the year.
This would be the final Piano Stories, wrapping up a 20-year series. The reasons for its conclusion are unknown, though likely this was due to Hisaishi moving towards more challenging concert music in the next decade.
Album - https://open.spotify.com/album/4ORKUWkQ2McDuOaAwIO25y?si=uQyN-tQkTpCS9duKgVDYsw
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A Tale of Ululu’s Wonderful Forest / Ururu no mori no monogatari (2009) - ****½
The star of A Tale of Mari and Three Puppies signed up for another dog-centric, family-friendly drama, this one about a two kids who go to live with their dad in Hokkaido, stumble upon an abandoned puppy that they take in, and decide to try to return it to its mother in the wild after discovering it’s actually an endangered wolf cub. One could imagine Hisaishi earlier in his career providing a cutesy, somewhat electronic score for an adventure movie involving children. Heck, that was essentially what we got in 1990 with his music for Tasmania Story. But this was the end of the aughts, when he had bigger budgets and more of an inclination towards using a full orchestra.
With some interesting colors to suggest the wild (didgeridoo, ethnic flute tabla drums) as well as various twinkling sounds and layered woodwind writing carried over from Ponyo. Hisaishi’s score succeeds brilliantly in evoking a sense of childlike wonder. It’s Totoro recast as a slightly more serious, largely symphonic score, with both an abundance of cheerful and upbeat vibes as well as a number of emotionally affecting passages. Granted, it doesn’t have any showstopper tunes that rival the composer’s best melodies, but the composer should still be commended for juggling four above-average themes throughout the film. The catchy, innocent-sounding idea for the titular animal morphs into a song as the end of the album complete with lyrics and vocals by Hisaishi’s daughter Mai Fujisawa, at this point 30 and an established songwriter.
The album could’ve been 10 minutes shorter and still had the same effect, but regardless it’s several steps up from A Tale of Mari and Three Puppies, and any fan of 1990s outdoorsy scores (such as Homeward Bound or Far From Home: The Adventures of Yellow Dog) or James Horner’s family-friendly music shouldn’t hesitate to seek this one out.
Several tracks - https://youtu.be/EwDo1vE1FRc?si=2yIeFsd6Iu2gb1lS
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Clouds above the Hill Season 1 / Saka no Ue no Kumo Season 1 (2009) - ****
After decades of author Ryotaro Shiba refusing to allow any adaptations of his novel set during the modernization of Japan in the 1800s and and culminating in the Russo-Japanese war, in 2001 his widow finally allowed Japan’s public broadcasting corporation NHK to adapt the work as part of its longstanding annual series of historical miniseries called taiga dramas. Preproduction was protracted, in part due to the original screenwriter’s suicide in 2004, but the network finally got five episodes aired in 2009 with two more four-episode seasons following in subsequent years. Domestic ratings were adequate but not quite hitting the highs of earlier taiga dramas, perhaps a disappointment given that this was by far the most expensive taiga drama the network had mounted to date. Outside of Japan, the show was perhaps only notable for having actor Ken Watanabe as narrator and for getting Joe Hisaishi to write its music.
The show is tied together by the composer’s gorgeous theme tune Stand Alone, with an album-opening song belted out by English soprano Sarah Brightman, an odd choice for a show with a plot that orbits around the rise of Japan’s military but still an effective one. The 52-minute album does have a minor irritation in that it devotes nearly one-third of its runtime to various arrangements of that theme which make it wear out its welcome. Most listeners will likely be satisfied with the first vocal version and a later orchestral version and skip over the second vocal track as well as the piano solo version.
The rest of the score, alternatingly moving and martial, continues the kind of impressive large-scale orchestral material heard at times in The Legend, though here laced with some of the dramatic heft that powered I Want to Be a Shellfish and occasionally the reverent Williams-like sound evoked in the climax of Howl’s Moving Castle. The album plays like a highly entertaining symphonic suite of standalone ideas outside of the main theme, though Hisaishi would take several of those other melodies in interesting new directions in later seasons. The Legend may have hit higher highs at times, but when it comes to TV scores from the composer Clouds above the Hill remains a more consistent accomplishment.
The composer worked several pieces from season 1 into a suite he recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra and released the following year, which closed with a rousing variation on the Stand Alone theme that is unique to the suite. The same suite would be recorded again by a Japanese orchestra as a bonus track for the third season’s album.
Note: I’ve seen various other translations for the series’ title including Clouds over the Hill, Clouds above the Slope, and A Cloud on a Slope. For my purposes, I’ll be sticking with the common English translation of the novel’s title.
Most of the album - https://youtu.be/cn8cjyratz0?si=_EsA3WQDHri7Ehcz
Melodyphony suite - https://open.spotify.com/track/5MH2jmgKJxHrMfOj5RyXPH?si=d56622b810ed4add
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Minima_Rhythm (2009) - *****
I’ve already mentioned this album three times in this rundown for its large-scale orchestra reinventions of Mkwaju, Da-ma-shi-e, and The End of the World, but while those tracks are excellent this album done with the London Symphony Orchestra is far more meaningful in how it effectively served as the debut of Hisaishi as a composer of serious classical concert music. The album kicks off with the lively Links and the very impressive Sinfonia for Chamber Orchestra, which in its third and final movement (Divertimento) seems to synthesize echoes of Gustav Mahler, Wolfgang Mozart, and minimalist composer John Adams into a thrilling new whole. That piece is one of the underrated highlights of the composer’s career - arguably standing head and shoulders above most of his film work - and proof that he was far more than just, to again borrow phrasing from the South China Morning Post, an adjunct to the movies of Miyazaki and Kitano.
Hisaishi was justifiably proud of his accomplishment and called Minima_Rhythm his favorite album to date in 2015.
Album - https://open.spotify.com/album/4o2DXsb3rM4PWU2DtWLVhL
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The ten best Hisaishi scores of the aughts
10. The Legend
9. Clouds above the Hill Season 1
8. Castle in the Sky (2003 version)
7. Howl’s Moving Castle
6. Departures
5. A Tale of Ululu’s Wonderful Forest
4. Spirited Away
3. Yamato
2. I Want to Be a Shellfish
1. Ponyo
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Next time: Video games, a forgotten Ghibli short film, and a murder most foul.
(Message edited on Monday, November 20, 2023, at 4:41 a.m. and Monday, November 20, 2023, at 4:45 a.m.)
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