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About this Piece

Without Joe Hisaishi’s dazzling and daring film scores, the beloved animated movies from Studio Ghibli might have never achieved the same captivating spirit for which they’re so well-respected and renowned. His acclaimed projects with director Hayao Miyazaki, from the early collaborations—Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), Princess Mononoke (1997), and Spirited Away (2001)—to the recent Academy Award-winning The Boy and the Heron (2023), have cemented Hisaishi’s music as synonymous with cinematic magic.

With a career spanning five decades, Hisaishi has earned his place as one of the most iconic film composers of our time by blending classical, minimalist, and New Age influences into a signature sound that’s both emotionally profound and universally resonant.

In the concert hall, Hisaishi’s allure is just as affecting as it is on the screen. In addition to releasing original symphonic music since 1981, he has been a sought-after conductor around the world. The legendary composer reunites with the Los Angeles Philharmonic to conduct two of his own harp compositions and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.

The first—Adagio for Two Harps and Strings—is a tribute to the Adagietto movement from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Nearly identical in mood and instrumentation (plus an additional harp), the piece echoes Mahler’s work, “of course, with great respect,” Hisaishi says.
The second piece—the world premiere of Hisaishi’s Harp Concerto—is harpist Emmanuel Ceysson’s dream come true. A longtime fan of Hisaishi, Ceysson told the LA Phil programming team, “Even if I have to wait 10 years for something, I would rather have one concerto written by this guy than anyone else.”

When the time finally came in 2023, the two met that summer to work out the initial ideas. Ceysson says the music itself is much more exciting and rhythmic than people may be used to, but it’s still classic Hisaishi—“very harrowing and a little dark, but really beautiful in color and very emotional.”
The deeply moving melodies, curious sense of adventure, and Ghibli-esque majesty find a colorful forebear in Pictures at an Exhibition. Ravel’s orchestration of the work whisks us away to surreal scenes with distinct characters, transporting us to familiar and fantastical realms where imagination knows no limits. —Piper Starnes