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Hisaishi’s musical pursuits in the wake of 2013 were quite diverse. His film music concerts started to go overseas, including his first performances in America. In Japan he conducted classical music concerts and released several albums of those recordings, some of them covering familiar works by Beethoven, Stravinsky, and Brahms but others featuring more minimalist and contemporary compositions by the likes of John Adams, Steve Reich, Philip Glass and Terry Riley. “This type of modern music has very few opportunities to be performed in Japan, so I created the Music Future series and selected pieces to introduce this type of music. There [is] good and bad music, fun and boring music, and that’s it. Groundbreaking or not, if you deliver proper music that’s decent, the audience will appreciate it.” Owing to most of the albums being unavailable in the U.S., the Music Future series won’t be covered as part of this rundown, though some pieces are on digital / streaming services and a few others are on Hisaishi’s YouTube channel.
Interview about Music Future - https://youtu.be/MJb4qlhcxaI?si=UCNuG1L4LvRsz7VL
The composer also continued his Minima_Rhythm series, with some of his pieces throwbacks to his early days and others more sprawling creations. Several symphonies debuted. He wrote a piece of music for the Chinese online game Honor of Kings. He and Chad Cannon reworked several scores into new symphonic suites for the concert hall. And in 2023 his longtime association with Universal Music ended as he switched over to the Deutsche Grammophon record label and recorded new performances of selections from his Miyazaki scores.
He put out two greatest hits compilation albums in 2020 and 2021 with Songs of Hope and Dream Songs and also finally made a significant portion of his discography available on U.S. digital / streaming services, though that didn’t mean he was necessarily a huge fan of what streaming was doing to the music industry. “With streaming, everything is focused on singles. An artist’s depth doesn’t have the chance to shine through. To ‘compose’ means to add structure, not just to a song, but to a collection of songs. We musicians have to really think about our approach in response to this.”
Road to Glory from Honor of Kings - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLI9SNV_oY0
And there were the new scores, a dozen across film, television, and video games - 10 of which will be covered as part of this rundown. There were major compositions from 2014 onward, but none of his scores were among them.
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The Little House / Chiisai ouchi (2014) - ***
This adaptation of an acclaimed 2010 novel about a Japanese housemaid resulted in Hisaishi’s second collaboration with director Yoji Yamada. The score plays almost like the composer was trying to balance a small-scale version of Howl’s Moving Castle with a warmer cousin of the restrained Villain, with two accordions thrown in for good measure as well as some string mannerisms that may appeal to fans of Ennio Morricone’s dramatic writing. The brief score is a slight step up from Tokyo Family in terms of memorability, especially with it becoming more expressive as it goes on, though the listenability of the album program is somewhat hampered by it being made up of a lot of short tracks that toggle between slightly new variations on one of the two featured themes. Exploring either the final 5-minute track from the score album or the piece arranged for a Works concert album released later in the year should be sufficient for most listeners. The film secured nine Japan Academy Prize nods including one for best score, Hisaishi’s seventeenth and final nomination.
Works IV track - https://open.spotify.com/track/7FT3l1tlTPC8GH0bHTjMCE?si=3d7979e677414ac1
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Snow on the Blades / Zakurozaka no adauchi (2014) - ***
This drama about a warrior who after failing to protect his shogun looks to hunt down the last remaining assassin was adapted from a novel by the same author who wrote When the Last Sword Is Drawn; perhaps that explained why Hisaishi was again involved in a visualization of his work. His usual orchestral craftsmanship is evident throughout the score, but don’t anticipate any of its melodies to stand out in the context of the composer’s illustrious career. The movie was more of a drama than an action-packed epic despite its historical setting, so the more understated approach was appropriate for the film, but expect the composition on the whole to feel adequate if largely unremarkable, which funny enough is not too far removed from my opinion on the composer’s score for When the Last Sword Is Drawn.
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Works IV: Dream of W.D.O. (2014) - ****½
The fourth - and currently final - Works album covered a live concert performance by Hisaishi and the World Dreams Orchestra in Tokyo in September 2014, serving as the concert debut of The Wind Rises, The Tale of Princess Kaguya, and best of all I Want to Be a Shellfish, the latter closing the first half of the night in high style. The inclusion of Kiki’s Delivery Service may feel redundant to experienced Hisaishi listeners, but otherwise this is a fresh-sounding, highly entertaining series of highlights. One thing to note: the album doesn’t cover the entire concert, as a few classical pieces, World Dreams, the Samurai Kids arrangement from Melodyphony, One Summer’s Day, and the Nausicaä finale are omitted, though the whole performance is on video (even if the version on YouTube lacks perfectly synchronized sound).
Album - https://open.spotify.com/album/1cSkgyLPIH59jTs8MjPQR4?si=IfqJsyj_Ta6fClW8PT87Dg
Full concert - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfWzLG-bVgA
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Minima_Rhythm II (2015) - ****
I’ll go to the mat defending William Walton’s first symphony as one of the greatest concert compositions of the twentieth century. One contemporaneous critic called that 1935 piece “an emotional blockbuster.” Anticipation was high when Walton’s second symphony was set to debut two decades later, and audiences and critics were a bit surprised when the composer’s composition turned out to be very different from that earlier praised work: lighter, shorter, only in three movements, and not built to immediately astonish. The work has undergone some reassessment more recently, but its initial mixed reception perhaps spoke to the composer’s desire to not just deliver the same thing again. In a way, Minima_Rhythm II was that album for modern listeners. If you went in expecting something like Sinfonia for Chamber Orchestra from Hisaishi’s 2009 album Minima_Rhythm, you were bound to be immensely disappointed - in part because no work recorded for this 2015 album required more than four players.
But that initial shock should hopefully give way to intrigue. While the album may not hit the heights of its predecessor, each included piece is still rather interesting. Two solo piano pieces prove entrancing. The rapid-fire Shaking Anxiety and Dreamy Globe written for two glockenspiels recalls the hypnotic feel of the composer’s debut album Mkwaju. The playful conversation among four saxophones in Single Track Music 1 should appeal to anyone who liked the semi-jazzy sound of Hisaishi’s 2000 studio album Shoot the Violist. And the album also includes the composer’s string quartet, which starts with a bouncy, carefree first movement (Encounter) before shifting into the sparse, haunting territory of his earlier d.e.a.d. piece in the second movement and adding some of the agitation of The End of the World in its third movement. The final movement Other World balances unease and serenity with great skill, providing an ambiguous but satisfying close.
Album - https://open.spotify.com/album/1T3q09tNWjloYmlymnI12C?si=i69gGvLwSP-TmL6ARi1fVw
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What A Wonderful Family! / Kazoku wa tsuraiyo (2016) - **½
After Tokyo Family and The Little House, director Yoji Yamada pivoted to this goofy comedy about a large family thrown into disarray when a wife asks for a divorce after 50 years of marriage. With many of the actors from Tokyo Family returning, the movie almost played like a parody of his acclaimed remake, though that didn’t stop this movie from getting significant awards consideration in Japan. Hisaishi’s score certainly plays up the comedy at times, with wailing brass (some not too far removed from the sad trombone sound) and some honky tonk piano straight out of Surrogate Jiji likely trying the patience of many listeners. But the score also has small-scale jazzy moments that feel like a throwback to the easygoing Fellini film scores of Nino Rota and the Truffaut film scores of Georges Delerue, so anyone with an affinity for those aforementioned older works may find some value in this 2016 score. The last four tracks on the 29-minute album arrange the score’s ideas into their most palatable presentation, but the rest of the album is dominated by short pieces, creating a stop-start kind of feel that likely makes hearing the score only essential for Hisaishi completists.
Album - https://www.cdjapan.co.jp/product/UMCK-1538
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The End of the World (2016) - ****
This album pulled from three concerts across 2015 and 2016. The Nausicaä symphonic poem from Works I appears, now with choir and an extra minute of Ligeti-like menace, as does the love theme and Madness from Porco Rosso and World Dreams. The orchestral / choral End of the World from Minima_Rhythm also shows up, as does the composer’s arrangement of the Skeeter Davis song of the same name in a less discordant presentation than its original appearance on the fifth Piano Stories album. Debuting here were a rueful piece for piano and strings done as an homage to Polish composer Henryk Górecki, an arrangement of d.e.a.d. including an operatic vocalist (the least interesting version of the piece to date), a concert performance of the end credits song from Villain, and the lighthearted Dream More.
Album - https://open.spotify.com/album/3fjsOIWZVmmSwVaiQpW2Bi?si=ADyAjCjpRw6lE-D_hZyuAA
Also, this happened at a 2016 concert in Taiwain - https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2016/08/23/2003653697
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What A Wonderful Family! 2 / Kazoku wa tsuraiyo 2 (2017) - **½
After over 30 years working in the industry, this was the first sequel film the composer had ever worked on. There’s a little bit of cut-and-paste, but this entry generally shifts from the comic nature of the original film’s music to more emotional passages. Also intriguing is how the sequel’s main title and end title pieces layer more traditional instruments over the main theme. Still, with it being a short score on an album with a lot of short tracks and with the music deemphasizing the easygoing Rota / Delerue vibes of its predecessor, it remains a rather marginal entry in the composer’s illustrious career.
Album - https://www.cdjapan.co.jp/product/UMCK-1567
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Minima_Rhythm III (2017) - ****½
The Minima_Rhythm albums returned to large-scale compositions with this third entry. TRI-AD for Large Orchestra found Hisaishi perhaps paying tribute to composer John Adams’ bustling piece Short Ride in a Fast Machine, while The East Land Symphony turned out to be an often cacophonous work that made his nervy The End of the World feel quite serene by comparison. Buckle up for an often challenging, occasionally loud and lively, and ultimately rewarding hour of music.
Album - https://open.spotify.com/album/4FVZteYjRnxYYJmNiEogD7
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Next time: Two more sequels, a new symphony, and another score I unfairly dismissed when it came out.
