Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann, Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone, Steven Spielberg and John Williams, some of the greatest filmmakers have built lasting, mutually enriching relationships with musicians. The decades-long collaboration between Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki and composer, pianist and conductor Joe Hisaishi certainly belongs in this hall of fame.
Hisaishi first worked with Miyazaki on the environmentally conscious science fiction film “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind”, which was released in 1984. Neighbor Totoro” (1988); the story of young girls’ independence “Kiki’s Delivery Service” (1989); the historical epic “Princess Mononoke” (1997); and the Academy Award-winning “Spirited Away” (2002), a gem about a quirky little girl that came second on the DailyExpertNews’ list of the 25 Greatest Movies of the 21st Century to date.
This week, longtime fans and newcomers alike can hear excerpts from those scores and more, when Hisaishi, 71, leads the American Symphony Orchestra in “Music From the Studio Ghibli Films of Hayao Miyazaki,” a series of concerts at Radio City Music Hall starting Saturday. (The performers will also include the MasterVoices Choir and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, as well as singers Amanda Achen and Mai Fujisawa, Hisaishi’s daughter.)
While clips from the films are projected onto a giant screen, Hisaishi’s concerts stand alone and are not intended to be simple compilations of classical scenes supported by a live ensemble.
“Watching a movie is very different from hearing the music at a concert, which gives the audience a different experience,” the composer said through an interpreter in a recent video call.
Hisaishi indeed built up the set list as if he were putting together one large composition, citing Mahler’s symphonies as a source of inspiration. “For example, the first part is ‘Nausicaa’, the second part is ‘Kiki’, the third is ‘Princess Mononoke’ and so on,” he said.
Hisaishi (who was born Mamoru Fujisawa but goes by a stage name) is also known for making minor adjustments for concerts. “The images are screened so that you relive the emotions you had watching the film,” Marco Bellano, who teaches the history of animation at the University of Padua, Italy, said in a video chat. “But at the same time Hisaishi is playing these compositions in concert, they don’t have exactly the same form, the same arrangements that they have in the movies. There is a piece from ‘Porco Rosso’ called ‘Madness’ that is identical in the soundtrack and one of the concert versions, but many other pieces are completely different. It’s really remarkable how he really cares about offering a new experience.”
Rest assured that the changes are not drastic and that the concerts retain the Hisaishi touch. Taken from “My Neighbor Totoro”, “The Path of the Wind” (reminiscent of another great Japanese musician, Ryuichi Sakamoto) retains its tender melancholy, while “Bygone Days”, from “Porco Rosso” (1992), is live just as melancholy, halfway between jazz and French chanson.
For James Williams, the director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London, Hisaishi’s contributions fit Miyazaki’s universe perfectly. “When you see those movies, there’s a certain humanity to the storylines, and that’s definitely reflected in Joe’s music,” said Williams, whose orchestra recently recorded an album of Hisaishi’s compositions. “It connects with people regardless of their culture, and that’s really powerful. What Joe has done is somehow preserve that integrity of Japanese culture, introduce that Western tonal system and find a way for the two to maintain their identities in perfect harmony.”
A distinctive appeal of Miyazaki’s films is that they rely on viewers, no matter how young they are, to figure things out for themselves. In part, this means not using music to enhance character traits or telegraph expected reactions from a viewer. Fortunately, this fits Hisaishi. “The music doesn’t have to suit every character,” he said. “It’s more about emotion, something that the character might feel. And at the heart of a movie, the music doesn’t have to say anything about the character or even the feelings,” he continued. “There’s already something that the audience could feel by just watching the movie.”
Released in Japan in 1986, “Castle in the Sky neatly illustrates how the Miyazaki-Hisaishi approach—which also involves knowing when not to score a scene—is different from that commonly found in American animation. . In 1999, Hisaishi not only reworked his existing score for the US release of that film, by Disney, but he expanded it massively, adding music in scenes that weren’t there before.
Hisaishi also refrains from reusing catchy musical phrases over and over in the same film. “From ‘Howl’s Moving Castle,’ you’ll find more of this idea of leitmotif, but it’s different from the Hollywood style, where the leitmotif appears very clearly and is very easy to remember,” Bellano said. “With Miyazaki and Hisaishi, that melody appears when it is needed and is not often repeated.”
Hisaishi writes standalone pieces, including symphonies, and has collaborated with other feature film directors – most famously, Takeshi Kitano, for whom he scored high-watermarks in the 1990s such as ‘Sonatine’, ‘Fireworks’ and ‘Kids Return’.
“I started my career as a minimal composer,” Hisaishi said, “and I use my melodic side more in Miyazaki films and my minimalist side in Kitano films – they are closer in style to what originally drew me to music.”
Yet it is his work with Miyazaki that has placed him firmly on the international music map.
Over the decades, the two men developed a complicated working method that involved a lot of back and forth. Early in the production process, Miyazaki Hisaishi gave an idea of the story, some sketches, sometimes just a few words. Based on those meager elements, the musician would create a so-called image album (which would later receive a commercial release). “For ‘Princess Mononoke,’ an early word Miyazaki-san called was tension, like the tension of an arrow,” Hisaishi said, using the Japanese honorific. He added that this inspired him to write a piece that “eventually became the title theme.” Once the film was finished, Hisaishi would write the score, which could also be released in a symphonic suite version.
The composer has not been idle. Being at home during the pandemic further stimulated his creativity — leading to a kind of epiphany that evoked Hisaishi in terms that felt Miyazakian.
“It took me seven years to write my first symphony, but in 2020 and 2021 I finished two,” he said, referring to “Dream Songs” and “Songs of Hope.” That experience “made me realize that I have a mission as a composer. People look at this changing world and are so disappointed: where is the happiness? What is going on? Look what’s going on in Ukraine,” he continued. “This is not something we expected to happen again in the 21st century. As a composer I have to see the world as it is, but I cannot be disappointed either: we need hope for the future.”
