Traditional / Toru Takemitsu: Londonderry Air
+Harold Arlen / Toru Takemitsu: Over the Rainbow
+George Gershwin / Toru Takemitsu: Summertime
+Akira Nakada / Toru Takemitsu: A Song of Early Spring
+Joseph Kosma / Toru Takemitsu: Amours Perdues
+Charles C. Converse / Toru Takemitsu: What a Friend
+Sammy Fain / Toru Takemitsu: Secret Love
+John Lennon & Paul McCartney / Toru Takemitsu: Here, There and Everywhere; Michele; Hey Jude; Yesterday
+Pierre Degeyter / Toru Takemitsu: The International
+Les Reed & Barry Mason / Toru Takemitsu: The Last Waltz

A high-quality recording of an album released in 2018 with popular songs in beautiful transcriptions by Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996), played by an Italian guitarist who specializes in this repertoire.

"My music is like a garden, and I am the gardener. Listening to my music is like walking through a garden and experiencing the changes in light, patterns and textures." Toru Takemitsu is considered the greatest composer of the classical music tradition in modern Japan, combining Japanese and Western instruments and techniques to create a unique sound world.

In the post-war years, during his youth, Takemitsu came into contact with Western music through radio broadcasts by the American occupying forces - not only jazz, but especially classical music by Debussy and Schoenberg. "Every afternoon they broadcast three hours of beautiful classical music - Bruno Walter, Toscanini or Paul Whiteman from the Hollywood Bowl. I listened to the radio every day." My first teacher was the radio.

Takemitsu found an interface between pop and classical music in his scores for almost a hundred Japanese films, such as Kurosawa's acclaimed "Ran". The guitar also played a leading role in several concert works, for example in the concerto "To the Edge of Dream" and in solo pieces such as "Towards the Sea". But these transcriptions belong to a lighter genre and are a loving homage to songwriters from George and Ira Gershwin to Lennon and McCartney. "Londonderry Air", "Over the Rainbow" and "The Internationale" are not often found together on song albums, but Takemitsu's taste was as wide-ranging as his sensibility. "Amours perdues" by Joseph Kosma is a classic example of post-war French chanson, while "What a Friend (we have in Jesus)" is a revivalist hymn from 1850s America.

Andrea Dieci has recorded Takemitsu's "own" concert music for guitar more than once, lending his interpretation of these transcriptions a special authority.