From pop music to film scores, electronica to experimental, Ryuichi Sakamoto was one of the most prolific, accomplished and influential artists of the last 50 years. Yet his death in March 2023 only slowed — but did not stop — great recordings from coming from his expansive body of work: that same year Sakamoto released two new tracks for the soundtrack to Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Monster,” contributed piano to a track on the debut studio album by South Korean rapper (and BTS member) Agust D, and with the help of his filmmaker son, Neo Sora, released “Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus,” a career-spanning final piano performance recorded just a few months earlier.
Following the concert film’s theatrical run in early 2024 and its premiere in July on the Criterion Channel, “Opus” will be issued August 9 as an album by Milan Records. The 20-track release features three fully new compositions from Sakamoto, as well as new arrangements of existing pieces from his almost 50-year career. Recorded in 2022 in a studio considered to have some of the finest acoustics in Japan, the clarity of the audio feels unparalleled — and as does the intimacy.
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Sakamoto, then struggling through the final months of his life, was severely compromised by illness, but elected to preserve the iconic melodies that became known worldwide, along with the imperfections that occurred while performing them. That includes the pause to reset at the end of “Andata” (from 2018’s “Async”), and his adjustments after making a mistake during “Bibo no Aozora” (which began its life as a pop song on 1995’s “Smoochy”). The record doesn’t aspire to provide a definitive version of these tracks, even the new ones, but to showcase how his creativity and life experience deepens their melodic and emotional weight while allowing for multiple interpretations.
Two originals, “BB” and “For Jóhann,” exude a unique poignancy in the wake of his own death: both are tributes to friends and collaborators (one to director Bernardo Bertolucci, three of whose films he scored, and the other to late composer Jóhann Johannson). “BB” is unsurprisingly elegant but full of feeling — contemplative, even mournful of the late filmmaker he considered a mentor, but never aims to echo any of the film scores he contributed to Bertolucci’s work. Meanwhile, the latter track spends six delicate minutes working through a melody that will feel familiar to anyone acquainted with Sakamoto’s work, seemingly exploring his feelings about Johannson rather than attempting to encapsulate them.
A third new track performed on a prepared piano, “20180219,” offers a more brittle and discordant sound than the others, more akin to Sakamoto’s more avant garde projects like those on which Sakamoto collaborated with Alva Noto. That said, he actually performs “Trioon” from his and Noto’s 2002 album “Vrioon,” and the performances underscore both his evolution as an artist and the core musicality that exists in his work regardless of its inspirations. That journey is further reiterated in solo piano arrangements of “Tong Poo,” one of the earliest tracks he recorded with pioneering electronic pop group Yellow Magic Orchestra, and “Happy End,” a 1981 collaboration with British musician Robin Scott. In their original incarnations, they buzz with life and energy, showering the listener with complex, angular electronics; here, they’re both effortless and contemplative, a reclaiming of their core identity after decades as electropop standards.
Sakamoto has created dedicated cues, or reinterpreted existing ones for the piano several times in the past. In 1999, he recorded “BTTB” (“Back to the Basics”), a throat-clearing homage to composing giants like Erik Satie that now endures as one of his signature albums and signaled a period of intense experimentation. “Playing the Piano” followed it ten years later, a slightly more conventional but no less delightful compilation covering versions of his best-known themes for “The Last Emperor,” “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence” and more. He subsequently released alternate versions of “Playing the Piano” in the U.S. and in 2020.
Yet this 20-track retrospective is not meant to replace any of those recordings. Rather, its release (currently via streaming platforms, but with plans for a physical release in the future) illustrates how adaptable, and yet enduring his work is. Ryuichi Sakamoto’s music is a unique gift in that it covers so many genres and explores so many sounds that even longtime fans or dedicated listeners will have their work cut out for them fully experience (much less appreciate) its breadth. Consequently, “Opus” feels less definitive than transitional, capturing a final public performance from Sakamoto that promises to reintroduce his work to the world — whether it’s with new ears or for the very first time.
