programme notes
phoenix collective
The Art Music of Joe Hisaishi
Programme:
Joe Hisaishi arr. Yukihiro Matsubara – ‘Mononoke Hime’ from Princess Mononoke
Joe Hisaishi arr. Andrew Wilson – Themes from Kiki’s Delivery Service
Joe Hisaishi arr. Andrew Wilson – ‘Madness’ from Porco Rosso
Joe Hisaishi – String Quartet no 1
Encounter
Phosphorescent Sea
Metamorphosis
Other World
Joe Hisaishi arr. Yukihiro Matsubara – ‘Name of Life’ from Spirited Away
Joe Hisaishi arr. Andrew Wilson – ‘Merry-go-round of Life’ from Howl’s Moving Castle
Joe Hisaishi – ‘Melody Road’
Joe Hisaishi (born Mamorou Fujisawa in 1950) is best known for his scores to blockbuster Japanese anime films such as Howl’s Moving Castle and Spirited Away. Starting with Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind in 1984, the partnership of Hisaishi and Studio Ghibli led to some of the best-loved film scores of all time, encompassing the historical fantasy Princess Mononoke, the whimsical Porco Rosso and the charming coming-of-age story Kiki’s Delivery Service. Hisaishi’s success as a film composer has led to him being dubbed ‘the Japanese John Williams’. However, Hisaishi has always produced his own art music in tandem with his film scores. Influenced by jazz and Japanese electro-pop, Hisaishi explores a unique musical language in his art music which has an entirely different flavour to his sweeping cinematic scores.
The String Quartet no 1 was written in 2012, and was inspired by Hisaishi’s exploration of the artworks of the Dutch artists Vermeer and Escher. The quartet is based on works which were commissioned by Shinichi Fukuoka, an art expert who created an exhibition of digitised artworks aiming to show how Vermeer’s works would have looked in his own time. Hisaishi’s music was designed to accompany the exhibition.
The four works which subsequently became the String Quartet no 1 are Hisaishi’s responses to four works by MC Escher. Known for his mesmerising fractal artwork, Escher’s detail and visual illusions are reflected in the almost mathematical complexity of Hisaishi’s composition.
The first movement, entitled ‘Encounter’, is based on a highly tessellated Escher work, which shows two divergent circular evolutions of dark and light humanoid grotesques. The beings emerge from the positive and negative spaces of a flat plane and appear to march out of the wall, which descends into a reflective pool. Hisaishi embodies this extra-dimensional artwork through strict mathematical rhythms and interlocking figures throughout the movement. The movement starts with a near unison passage, progressing through various iterations of the theme, which is subsequently inverted.
In the second movement, ‘Phosphorescent Sea’, Hisaishi uses atmospheric harmonics and glissandi to express the tranquillity and timelessness of the Escher lithograph of the same name.
Escher’s ‘Metamorphosis’ series explores graduated transitions of one shape into another, often moving from abstraction to realism. Hisaishi’s musical equivalent in the third movement is a series of metric modulations, in which the same material is presented in different rhythmic contexts. This parallels the consistent transformation of each theme in the artwork.
The final movement, ‘Other World’, is based on a wood engraving showing a Renaissance-style interior where perspectives seem to shift paradoxically in various segments of the room. On the refracted windowsills of each perspective sits a bird with a human head and a suspended cornucopia, beyond which stretches a cratered landscape with a star-filled sky behind. Hisaishi’s use of hocketing (dividing a single figure between several players) reflects the idea of multiple perspectives. The geometric elements of the artwork are expressed through strong ostinato, while the dreamlike, alien nature of the landscape is portrayed through long, dovetailing pitches at the opening of the movement.
It could be argued that in this quartet, Hisaishi’s work is not so much music in the generally accepted sense of the word, but is rather brilliantly constructed aural manifestations of the Escher ‘landscapes of the mind’ that inspired the work.
Musicians, Phoenix Collective Quartet:
Violin 1 & Artistic Director - Dan Russell
Violin 2 - Pip Thompson
Viola - Ella Brinch
Cello - Andrew Wilson