Following on from recent Naxos collections of Takemitsu's work by flautist Robert Aitken and conductor Marin Alsop, the young Kotaro Fukuma now illuminates the Japanese composer's slender but significant piano portfolio.
The essence of this music is reflected in Noriko Saito's cover artwork as it blurs the linesbetween what might be water, mist and light.
Even when Takemitsu is at his most rigorously avant-garde, in scores like the 1961 Piano Distance, Debussy's impressionist spirit and the crystalline delicacy of Messiaen conciliate without compromise. A pair of 1978 miniatures for young players will have domestic pianists searching out the music, two Rain Tree Sketches written a few years before his death, which chime and hypnotise as they dance.
Fukuma is exquisitely attuned to Takemitsu's magical world. No nuance is lost, while the Canadian production team, working in Toronto's Glenn Gould Studio, ensure a subtle layering of piano sonorities.
Naxos also takes us from the delicate watercolours of Takemitsu to the full-scale murals of Leopold Stokowski's so-called "Symphonic Syntheses" of Wagner, with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jose Serebrier.
Stokowski made his name with Disney's 1940 Fantasia and, never losing his showbiz savvy, was still thrilling audiences in the 60s and 70s on Decca's Phase Four releases.
The young Serebrier was an assistant to the maestro and his booklet note on Stokowski's sound offers valuable insights. Particularly interesting is the master's penchant for unregimented bowing and eccentric placement of instruments on stage.
Overly patrician taste might stand in the way of some coping with Stokowski's lush and occasionally cheesy Wagner re-scorings, although Serebrier and his Bournemouth musicians are unflinching in faith and energy, keeping the momentum up even through the 36 pulsating minutes of Tristan und Isolde.
Oscar Wilde's Lady Henry in The Picture of Dorian Gray liked Wagner's music better than anybody's as it was so loud one could talk the whole time without other people hearing what one said. If the good woman had a state-of-the-art stereo and this Naxos recording she would be too rapt to utter even a syllable.
* Toru Takemitsu, Piano Music (Naxos 8.570.261)
* Wagner/Stokowski Symphonic Syntheses (Naxos 8. 570.293)
