Toru Takemitsu Composition Award

Good evening.
Thank you all so much for this wonderful time we had here.
I think first of all we should remember Toru Takemitsu who gives the name to this competition, and I think his power, his clearness, his deep musicality, and his rejection of compromises are something we all should appreciate and try to follow.
We should thank Maestra Kanako Abe and the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra who really seriously worked on these compositions. I say thank you to these wonderful four composers for exposing themselves in this concert. Thank you to Mr. Seiji Kito and Jun Sawahashi. Thank you for the invitation. I felt safe and my wife and I could really enjoy the time here.

I was asked to give short comments on all of these four pieces, and I do it in the opposite sequence to the concert.
Francesco Mariotti’s Diptych is a very clear piece, full of contrasts. You could hear it. What fascinated me was intensity of the first movement, and the wonderful motif in the second part, this chord was repeated decrescendo. This came in completely different surroundings. By the way it was amazingly well performed.
Tidal Lock by Jiyaing Zhou is a wonderful sound composition and seems to be music about two objects in the space, billions of kilometres away. In the large distance to the sun, extremely cold and extremely isolated. It is about the relationship of these two objects. But if we listen to this piece, we get conscious that this is not about some planets far away, but it is about the composer herself. It is an expressive piece, full of emotions. With amazingly composed microtones and the vibrations within the brass.
Nozomu Kaneda’s piece, Play for Skin and Fabric is very unusual in the musical material. The material is mostly based on chains of perfect fifths, as in the tuning of a string instrument such as a cello or a violin, and continues this kind of tuning in different registers. With this reused material, he composes a cosmos of sounds within a very fascinating and complex rhythmic structure and with a kaleidoscope of colors.
Suguru Wagatsuma’s piece MATSURU is an extremely powerful piece with complex sounds. Extremely complex and this complexity is contrasted with unisons. But if you listen carefully, you will find when all the string instruments play together the same melody, the reality of sound is as complex as the complex chords have been before - in the same way one saxophone with multiphonics is able to create the same complexity. What is very fascinating in this piece is that the human voice is included. This means he consciously understands that the performers of the orchestra as human beings.
And now I have to tell you something which you could not have heard because you could only see it. This score is handwritten. If you look at it, it reminds me of the scores of György Ligeti in the early 1960s. This also means if you look to the black place here, these are thousands of tiny notes, and each of the players has to realize what he has written with his own hand. There were almost no handwritten scores in all the competition. Most of the handwritten were just bad. But the message of the composer to the performers is, I take care of these pitches of each of them as you have to take care of your notes. Within the competition where so many scores have used copy and paste, it was for me really intense to see the realization of his score.

Let me say something else. A composer who is 100 percent happy after the first performance is a bad composer. A piece which you can just realize from zero in three rehearsals must be poor. The problem is all these four pieces are by very good composers, but all these performances were not really perfect. It cannot be perfect. For example, in the Diptych, the first movement should have more power and there should be more intensity with low frequencies and network between the higher elements. The quarter tones in the Tidal Lock were performed only approximate. At the beginning we could hear what was composed but just as later it should have be done the same way but there was not the time to do it. The dynamic contrasts in the Play for Skin and Fabric should have been much more intense. But the rhythm was done perfectly so we had to pay the price. The voices in MATSURU should be much more intense. The composer demonstrated the orchestra how he wants it. We would need more time to do it. This means theoretically there should be more rehearsals; this is not a favor to the composers. The composers know what they want. And in this case, it was good luck that it was a judge who at least believed he knows what they wanted. But you missed it. New music, contemporary music is not for the composer. This is not a grace society does for us five crazy guys. It is for those humans who perform it and for those who wants to listen to it.

Originally, I had planned to divide this prize into four equal parts, because I chose four composers out of 137. Composers where I felt when I read the scores that they have an individual language and an inner necessity to express.
There are two third prizes. But please, these are not third prizes from four. These are third prizes from 137. The names of these composers are Jiyaing Zhou and Francesco Mariotti.
I want to say I choose you and I believe in you, and you did not disappoint me at any moment.
From now on your names are connected with Toru Takemitsu, and my dream is that these rehearsals and this musical experience could be something like a rocket ship for the rest of your careers as composers.
I said I wanted to divide the prize into four unless something spectacular happened. This spectacular thing were the two compositions of the other two composers.
Mr. Kaneda, what you wrote opens new worlds in compositional techniques. You use very traditional elements and you put these elements in a new context.
Mr. Wagatsuma, your piece has an extreme power. It is an amazing piece and the way how you composed the timing, how you controlled the material, and how you integrated the human voice are exceptional.

When you are the only judge of a competition, it is a very problematic situation. Well, I watched the rehearsals, I tried to support the composers. But I want to share with you the situation: there was a Japanese orchestra, a Japanese conductor, and two Japanese composers. They spoke in Japanese, and when I listened to them I had no idea what they said and no idea what the conductor said to the orchestra. There also was a Chinese and an Italian composer. They spoke English and I know it was very difficult for both sides to understand their accents. But these composers could have no idea what the conductor said to the orchestra. And as a judge, I have to ask myself, is my decision correct? But the basis of my decision is not today’s performance. The basis are the scores. And for example, the reason why I gave the first prize to Nozomu Kaneda is the dynamic range of his composition, which was barely audible. Also your piece, Mr. Wagatsuma, suffered by the school choir sound of the orchestra’s shouting. It is a coincidence that these two very special compositions by chance are composed by Japanese composers. I ask everybody who is able to do it as a favor to repeat all these four compositions, because in all these four compositions there is so much substance in them. We have heard an amazing and beautiful concert and only one performance is too few for each of these pieces.
Congratulations to you all and thank you so much for your wonderful music.

About the prize money, I have decided to divide it by this interval [here Mr. Haas plays a major third interval on the piano], the ratio of 4:5. This means the third prizes are 666,667 yen each, and the first prizes are 833,333 yen each. Thank you all for this wonderful possibility.

Edited by Tokyo Opera City Cultural Foundation