14th August 2025
Royal Albert Hall, London, United Kingdom
JOE HISAISHI Symphonic Suite: The Boy and the Heron
JOE HISAISHI The End of the World (2015 version)
STEVE REICH The Desert Music
John Holiday (counter-tenor)
BBC Singers
National Youth Voices
Philharmonia Chorus
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Joe Hisaishi (conductor)
It was the 80th anniversary of VJ Day (Japan surrendered in WWII on US 14/8 and JP 15/8) and the BBC recruited the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and, of all people, Joe Hisaishi to commemorate the event with a very bleak and pessimistic programme. Fans of Studio Ghibli anticipating tuneful music for fantasy worlds got 15 min of that in the form of a "Symphonic Suite" from the Oscar-winning "The Boy and the Heron", but even that movie was set in WWII and a tragedy of war and destruction. Outside his Ghibli work, Hisaishi is a minimalist composer. "The End of the World" is a 2015 global generalisation of a 2008 work written in response to 9/11 and is inspired by the 1962 song by Skeeter Davis which starts with the line "Why does the sun go on shining?" (think about the Japanese flag; song is reharmonised as V). The work is tuneful and shows Hisaishi's mastery in colourful orchestration and even includes joyful big band jazz in II, but it is always played against a recurring siren and unsettling chimes - it's tragicomedy again - can we still live as usual and have fun in the face of adversity? In Steve Reich's "The Desert Music", the desert refers to many things, especially Alamogordo, the site of the atomic bomb testing, and the desert left behind by human destruction. Hearing 45 min of a constantly evolving rhythmic and harmonic continuum was a special sonic experience. One has to appreciate the sheer stamina and virtuosity of the players and three chorus. It takes the kindred spirit of a fellow minimalist to unearth the fascinating nuances like the fugue in IIIA and the gliss en masse in IIIC. Compared to the recent recording, RPO and Hisaishi were on aggressive high octane mode. It was rich, spiky and relentless and I feared getting shell shock from the beats. There is no real resolution to any of these. We humans have not learnt anything in 80 years either. "How are you going to live your life?" ("君たちはどう生きるか" - original title of "TB&TH") Leaders who discuss Ukraine and Gaza today, those who deforest the world every day, and those who insult Miyazaki and the human spirit with AI - do you want to turn this planet into a desert? How do you want to live your life?
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