Last post on The Boy and the Heron - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=129765
See my profile for earlier posts in this series.
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First off…for those who don’t know, Joe Hisaishi was in town last weekend conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, an event I was rather excited to attend ever since it was announced as part of the CSO’s 2023-24 season program last summer.
The night kicked off with a newer suite from Howl’s Moving Castle, one that hit the usual familiar beats and swelled to a marvelous final performance of the work’s waltz theme, though its omission of The Boy Who Swallowed the Star was a minor bummer considering the caliber of the CSO’s brass players. The night then turned to Hisaishi’s third symphony, which he was commissioned to write for the 50th anniversary of the New Japan Philharmonic and was originally performed in Japan in 2021; he’s been showcasing it throughout his North American tour this summer. The early parts unfurled a robust horn fanfare, suggesting Holst or maybe Rózsa, but as the first movement went on it seemed to be suffering an identity crisis, oddly toggling between fantastical Ni No Kuni orchestrations and jazzier interludes. Performance dynamics may have also played a part in some of my frustrations with the movement; at one point it felt like every section of the orchestra was trying to play loud, yet despite the string players’ furious movements I could barely discern what they were doing. This may very well have been the point, as the composer mentioned in the program that the piece was principally structured around “the movement of sound,” but knowing that didn’t exactly make the piece wholly palatable.
The second movement started as a slow, sad string elegy before moving its melody into a more lively and bustling environment - with a brief string quartet interlude, a nice touch - before returning to its somber origins; it remains the only part of the symphony to have any online presence (see below). The third movement was an attempt at musical cleverness, with the entire segment apparently derived from six notes, but its fondness for this technique likely didn’t leave the audience enraptured when it seemed to drag in its later portions, though the piece did come to a vigorous close. Hisaishi apparently wrote the entire work in only four months, with the final movement inspired by the game Sudoku, but the real puzzle is why he didn’t take a little longer to refine the piece. In a night otherwise dominated by a raucous reception, it was the only element that received merely polite applause.
Things picked up in the night’s second half with DA-MA-SHI-E, one of my favorite pieces by Hisaishi, and the 2021 version of the Princess Mononoke symphonic suite, which I’ve already expressed mixed feelings about - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=128645. Here, soprano soloist Diana Newman (singing two passages almost like they were a Mahler work) was unfortunately drowned out by the ensemble in the suite’s finale, performance dynamics once again proving an issue for the night. The end of the program was still greeted by the loudest cheers I can recall in my decade-plus of attending CSO concerts, though I was more entertained by the squeals of adolescent glee that greeted the first chord of the first encore, a piano solo of One Summer’s Day from Spirited Away. Encore #2 World Dreams brought the night to a sweeping close, even if it was an odd choice for an American crowd largely unfamiliar with it.
Symphony #3 Movement #2 (debut performance in Japan) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiGNhGMs7X4
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2024 has so far brought one film score from the composer. Hisaishi crafted appropriately intimate music for the drama Silent Love about a budding romance between a mute man and a blind woman. It makes for a likable 30 minutes on its album with a more emotive piano solo as its finale, though listeners should be advised that there’s little here stylistically you haven’t heard from this composer before, save for some electric guitar intrusions. It remains unclear what led the composer, far removed from his film scoring heyday, to say yes to this of all projects; he has no prior history with the director, for starters. Perhaps it was as simple as the film sharing the same name as Silent Love, the superb stylish track from his first great live action film score A Scene at the Sea.
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Album - https://open.spotify.com/album/0V8SYMiseBxd13rhdfmcsF
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The composer’s second album from his exclusive recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon also arrived this year. Called Joe Hisaishi in Vienna, it included the debut album presentation of the composer’s stellar second symphony, for which my thoughts were already captured here - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=129671. The other contained work is Viola Saga, which essentially functions like a two movement viola concerto and finds the composer revisiting some of the delightful rhythmic energy of many of his aughts scores and subsequent album / concert works.
****½
Album - https://open.spotify.com/album/2GUUSp5HD5OhINznTpd4TM
Composer interview - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2ocUhCta44
Portions of Viola Saga
- Movement 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1UV35Vf9Q4
- Movement 2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lO37ypbl-g
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Next time: Who knows? Multiple sources have already indicated Miyazaki may be gearing up for another movie, so if nothing else we have something to look forward to in another 4+ years.
