Featuring world-premiere recordings, this second set of Yūji Takahashi portrait albums brings together the live recordings of two concerts conducted by Yoichi Sugiyama in Tokyo, as part of the Suntory Summer Festival 2020, and at a special Yūji Takahashi Portrait Concert at the Tokyo Bunka Kaikan Recital Hall in 2021. Covering 57 years of Takahashi’s creative activity, the works represented in this compilation span a period in which his musical, aesthetic and political positions underwent radical change.
The earliest piece, Phonogène (1962), reflects the intellectual rigour and complexity of Takahashi’s music at this period, especially his use of mathematical generative processes – an interest the composer shared with Xenakis, whom he had met in Japan the previous year. Written in Paris, where Takahashi was now studying with Xenakis, Bridges II (1965) includes microtonal deviations of pitch. Orphika (1969), whose title refers to the ancient Orphic religion, uses mathematical procedures based on probability,