Discovering Takemitsu via Ozawa’s 1968 recording of November Steps and a BBC Radio 3 broadcast of Green, I pestered dealers until I unearthed a Japanese LP devoted to his music. Today, life is easier for collectors.

Since his evolution into self-confessed Romantic, virtually every major label has released something by Takemitsu, so Otaka has stiff competition, notably a fine reading of Water Dreaming by Patrick Gallois. A Way A Lone II is included on Rudolf Werthen’s admirable survey of Takemitsu’s film and concert music, and Paul Crossley’s performance of riverrun (Virgin, 9/91 – nla) should be heard. Aided effectively by the soloists, Otaka’s interpretations compare well.

In riverrun Takemitsu approached closer to the conventional soloist-ensemble than usual. Noriko Ogawa, who has recorded the complete piano solos for BIS (3/97), judges the balance sensitively, preparing the ground for that moment when the orchestra leaves the piano to decorate the silence with a few farewell notes.

riverrun and A Way A Lone draw inspiration from Finnegans Wake. Leif Hasselgren notes a parallel between the circular structure of Joyce’s novel and the way Takemitsu’s music seems to ‘start from nowhere and disappear into the same nowhere’. For all his acknowledged debt to French Impressionism, and to Japanese traditions, I’d argue for the significance of his early interest in electronic music, where sounds appear and fade like headlights on the horizon or plants flowering in a time-lapse film.

Sharon Bezaly’s flute playing intensifies the feeling that Water Dreaming is a perfect crash-course in later Takemitsu, full of references to his influences yet identifiable at any moment as pure, individual and personal Takemitsu, and always bewitching.