Yoshiki Classical

Background

In 1993, Yoshiki recorded his first classical studio album, Eternal Melody, in London at the studios owned by English record producer Sir George Martin, who produced and co-arranged the album, with the music performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. It mostly included orchestral arrangements of songs from his band X Japan.

The second studio album, Eternal Melody II, was recorded in the Los Angeles County, California; in his own Extasy Recording Studio, O'Henry Sound Studios, and Paramount Pictures Scoring Stage M facility. All songs were written and composed by Yoshiki, additionally performed by Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra.

In 2012, Yoshiki composed the theme song for the 69th Golden Globe Awards, and on January 15, 2013, the theme was officially released through iTunes in 111 countries, with all proceeds being donated to charities chosen by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. After the album release on August 27, 2013, in its celebration, a special live performance was held at the Grammy Museum.

On February 19, at the Grammy Museum was announced Yoshiki's first classical world tour. It will start on April 25 in Costa Mesa, California, and will continue throughout the world, visiting Mexico, Russia, Germany, France, United Kingdom, China, Thailand, Taiwan, and Japan, a total of 13 shows in 10 countries. Due to scheduling issues, the concert at Toronto, Canada, on May 10 has been postponed to second part of the world tour. The tour setup features Yoshiki on piano, several strings as cellos and viola, and vocalist Katie Fitzgerald from Violet UK. Performances will include classical versions of songs he composed, as well depending on the venue, some famous composers like Tchaikovsky.

Composition

Yoshiki Classical contains mostly previously released songs. "Amethyst" was the first orchestral song Yoshiki composed, "Red Christmas" is a song by his musical project Violet UK, while "Seize the Light" is from a group Globe, with whom Yoshiki collaborated in the early 2000s. There are three orchestral arrangements of X Japan's songs "Tears", "Forever Love", and differing on the edition, "Say Anything", or previously unreleased "The Last Song".

It includes "Anniversary", composed and performed at the request of the Japanese government at a celebration in honor of the tenth anniversary of Emperor Akihito's enthronement in 1999. Two theme songs, "I'll Be Your Love", from the World Fair Expo 2005 held in Japan, and of "Golden Globe" awards. Besides that, was included previously unreleased song "Miracle", used since 2010 as the opening intro theme song for the X Japan's concert tours.

Release

The album was first released in North America on August 27, 2013, as digital download via iTunes. On September 24, was digitally released worldwide and CD format in North America, while on September 25 was released as a special short digital edition titled "Yoshiki Melodies Classics" in Japan.

On the Oricon charts, it reached number four. On Billboard's Classical Albums chart list reached number eleven, while on Billboard Japan it reached number three at the Top Albums list, and number one (for three consecutive weeks) at the Classical Albums list. On iTunes Store, it has become number one on classical charts in ten different countries, mainly in Asia (Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Macau, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, Finland and Canada). In United States and Norway was number two, Australia number six, France number ten, Philippines number twelve, Switzerland number fourteen, Russia number sixteen, and number forty-four in England.

Track listing

All tracks written by Yoshiki.

Recording personnel