This recording project, conceived as a tribute to the 90th anniversary of the composer’s death, traces the entire corpus of Takemitsu’s production for the six strings. Five original works will therefore be considered: Folios, his first approach to solo guitar, composed in 1974 and pervaded by a modernist atmosphere; All in Twilight from 1987, dedicated to Julian Bream, in which is evident a stylistic change that anticipates the sound climate of the three subsequent works, namely A Piece for Guitar, Equinox and In the Woods, written in the short period of time between 1991 and 1995, just one year before the composer’s death. These are pieces united by a unitary and strongly characterized writing style, that of Takemitsu’s mature period, who only a few years earlier had finally arrived at what he himself has repeatedly defined as the “sea of tonality”.

The Twelve Songs fill the second half of the recording: their subtitle – Songs that the Whole World Sings – reveals a lyrical and romantic trait that in reality had always been present in Takemitsu’s poetics. Paired with The Last Waltz, another transcription published later in 1983, these transcriptions  – despite their lightness – make us partakers of a more intimate and less known aspect of the composer, as well as demonstrating his great skills as an arranger: they are – in fact – beautiful reworkings in jazz style that exploit the instrument in a brilliant way and which allow us to go deeper into the way of understanding the six strings by this great personality of the twentieth century.