A 2 CD set known as Akira Ifukube Best Movie Songs (which of course hasn't a song on it being all film music) is available from both Tower Records and CD Connection for a price in the upper 30s lower 40s. It is on King Records from Japan (KICC-296/7). These are re-recorded cues and suites from Ifukube scores going as far back as 1947. The sound is superb and the performances are fine, some cues catching the original tracks better than others, but all passable.

Ifukube is best known for the Toho monster films and music from Godzilla and Monster Zero are here as is an energetic (but slightly off) version of the theme from the Maijin films. Still, this collection seems to emphasize Ifukube's non-monster scores: 5 cues from the wonderful score to To the End of the Silver Mountains, the finale to Kurosawa's The Quiet Duel, suites from Joseph Von Sternberg's The Saga of Anatahan and Kon Ichikawa's The Burmese Harp, and titles from The Little Prince and the 8-Headed Dragon that H Rocco mentions frequently in his posts.

There are occasional bursts of violence and the familiar Toho march, but these CDs are mostly music from the slower, more quiet, stoic, elegaic, nobly tragic side to Ifukube's sound.

I haven't figured out who conducted it, but it is a solid introduction to music by Ifukube if you were looking for one to put next to GNP Crescendo's Best of Godzilla Volumes 1 & 2.

I'm sold!

coooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool

P.S. Mommy Joan, this might be the perfect intro CD for you!

What's great about the thing is that one of the albums was devoted to music from Nikkatsu studio films. Nikkatsu is like the Roger Corman/AIP studio of Japan responsible for the Seijun Suzuki films and lots of soft core "pink" Roman porno films. Whenever a real blousy cue would show up on the sampler, I'd go, "I'll bet that's a Nikkatsu film." Of course Nikkatsu produced The Burmese Harp (!?!) which is the equivalent of Troma making Citizen Kane, so go figure.

For the record, most of Ifukube's film scores were done for either Toho or Daiei; several at Shochiku and Nikkatsu; and only a tiny handful at Toei. I don't know why so few at Toei, except, to quote one actor who still works for them on occasion, "They're probably the worst studio in the history of Japan!" I'd imagine that around the time Toei was really stepping up production, Ifukube was getting too expensive for them; additionally, their average product (yakuza films) was not really his idiom. He was typed more as a samurai and monster composer, although he did plenty of "home dramas," although mainly of the "heavy, sick, twisted" variety, to paraphrase him. I was surprised he didn't score the LONE WOLF & CUB series, since he'd collaborated well with its directors before (Kenji Misumi and Yoshiyuki Kuroda), and did wind up scoring Misumi's final film, WOLF, CHOP THE SETTING SUN. He actually LIKED Misumi, and he didn't like many of his directors (mainly Ishiro Honda and Daisuke Ito get praise from him, and then largely in part, I suspect, because they were easy to please. Still, after just a few years in his film career, you knew with Ifukube precisely what kind of score you were going to get -- that's why Honda picked him for GODZILLA, although they'd never worked together before. Although he insists that he was typecast and could have done much different stuff, if only he'd been asked. He's grown more philosophical about his film work over the years, no longer as dismissive of it as he used to be.)

I REALLY want a couple of the Ifukube discs that Tower advertises on their website. Thank God for upcoming paychecks. (Well, they're "in the mail," grrrrr)

And you know what, "Ballata Sinfonica" isn't even one of his better works.

Among my multiple goals is to publish the first English biography of Mr. Ifukube. I already have his permission. Thing is, there's so much material to pore over (most of it in Japanese), I figure I'll have to have translated one of the existing books, and modify it. (No, I'm not stealing some other author's work, he's a friend too, and said he would be thrilled to be published in English. It's just a question of what the whole thing's going to look like when we're through, since I need a THIRD party to help translate.)

(actually, there's a mammoth three-volume Ifukube biography out in Japan now which I haven't read, not least because for the most part, I CAN'T READ IT! Maybe I should just improve my Japanese and translate THOSE. Although I doubt there's much of a market for them over here ...)

Marian, you owe it to yourself to find a copy of BUDDHA. I think that some stores, e.g. Tower, are now billing the reissue as "Symphonic Ode." (Inasmuch as the formal English title of the work is "Symphonic Ode to Gautama the Buddha.")

You know, incidentally, every piece of Ifukube cover artwork I've dialed up on the Net of late has obviously featured his own calligraphy. (You would not have seen it on the cover of the disc with "Ballata Sinfonica" since he wasn't the sole composer featured.)

A friend of mine is Japanese. Well, sort of. His parents are, and he was born in Japan, but moved to Vienna soon. Japanese is his mother tongue - hard to believe, for his German sounds more Austrian than mine, I think. But he can hardly READ Japanese. I showed him the liner notes from my Japanese import Total Recall, but he could only make out a few parts of them. He said that to read a simple Japanese newspaper, you have to know over 1,500 Kanji letters!

Ten or so years ago, the Japanese Prime Minister met with the (mainland) Chinese Prime Minister to apologize, in that roundabout formal Japanese way, for having invaded China some sixty years before. The Chinese Premier had an answer ready: "And we apologize to you," he said, "for giving the Japanese the two worst aspects of our own culture: Confucianism, and kanji."

The Japanese seem to be really enthusiastic about "classical" music. Even the version of Anton Bruckner's 9th symphony I have, performed by the Austrian Bruckner Orchester Linz and conducted by Kurt Eichhorn (Austrian or German, I suppose) was release on the Japanese Camerata label (all the text is twice on the cover, in English and Japanese). It's a shame that their own music is so neglected here.

It is certainly true that most Japanese contemporary music is ignored outside its homeland, except for the occasional anime score or Toru Takemitsu piece. Takemitsu, whom I respect, must have had SOME kind of connections, because he's probably the best-known of current Japanese composers. Not that he doesn't deserve the attention, but Ifukube is some 20 years older, and he seems to be pigeonholed as "Mr. Godzilla," which is true -- a LOT of his best film work is monster stuff -- but it's also unfair.

NP: THE ENTERPRISE VS. GODZILLA (Akira Goldsmith)

Anyway, the reason why I mention this here is that the documentary accompanied the orchestra on a tour to Japan. Obviously, the Japanese are so interested, and by now also familiar with western music (they even have a Herbert von Karajan place in Tokyo!), several members of the orchestra stated that playing in Japan is not really like playing abroad, but more like a concert at home.

Also, one of the players of the orchestra was seen performing a song accompanying himself on some sort of guitar. The song was about and against racism and included a list of famous Austrian Jewish artists, and I was really glad to hear the name Korngold in that list.

I've acquired some Satoh items. There are Satoh cues from various Godzilla scores but I'm sure you have those. I have numbers 2, 4, and 10 from the 16 CD series Film Music of Masaru Satoh, the complete score to Half Human, 2 LPs from the LP series of Satoh scores (mostly Kurosawa films), and the US LP of Yojimbo. There is a complete CD for Satoh's score to The H-Man that I'd like to get my hands on.

NP: The Saga of Anatahan (I don't know, I can't read Kanji)

While still in his teens, Mr. Ifukube and his best friend Fumio Hayasaka (later Kurosawa's favorite composer, until dying quite young of tuberculosis in 1955) together played a selection of European music on the Hokkaido stage. "Festival du Musique Contemporaire," it was called, something like that (Ifukube was already multilingual). Ifukube on violin, Hayasaka on piano. Among their choices was the first-ever Japanese performance of the work of Erik Satie. "I was a 'modern boy,'" Ifukube likes to joke.

I picked up the Film Works of Akira Ifukube Volume One CD--most of the cues seem to be taken right off the film soundtracks and there are a few tracks with dialogue. The music is good, but this isn't a single CD anthology that best introduces Ifukube.

The neat thing is that this CD provides original cues from To the End of the Silver Mountains. The re-recorded version on AI's Best Movie Songs is slightly slower than the original, but the original track is so muddy, that cues can only really be appreciated in the re-recorded version.

There is a series of 5 CDs entitled Japanese Cinema Music Series with each CD devoted to a Japanese composer. The Composers are Yasushi Akutagawa, Toru Takemitsu, Masaru Satoh, Toshiro Mayuzumi (this CD has 10 minutes from Tokyo Olympiad one of my favorite scores of all time), and Akira Ifukube. Maybe the Ifukube CD in this series might be the 1 CD sampler that best represents him (I don't know as I don't have this yet).

I wish I could burn CDs because then I'd put together my own sampler of Ifukube that would blow away anyone unfamiliar with his work. I could record the cues onto cassette tape. Maybe someone here could convert the tape to a CDR (via mini-disc or some such approach) and make the CDRs available to whoever on the board wants to have an Ifukube sample anthology.

When I mentioned this before, I asserted that there was a sixth volume, but rereading (well, struggling with) the advertisement, I'm not sure it's for sale in stores. I think the idea might be that you buy the original six discs, and you mail in the coupons and get this one for free (ALWAYS save your wraparounds, people!): a "combination album" of highlights from others in the original Toho Records LP series, featuring works by Mayuzumi, Riichiro Manabe, Yuzo Matsumura, Chuji Kinoshita, and one more guy whose name I'm not sure of (it'll come back to me.)