Bleep

This record presents the music of the Howl’s Moving Castle symphonic suite, a set of compositions made by longtime Studio Ghibli composer Joe Hisaishi to accompany his score for the studio’s 2004 film. Recorded by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, the Howl’s Moving Castle suite is a condensed hit of many of the best things about both the movie’s score and Hisaishi’s compositional style in general. As well as Hisaishi’s typically swashbuckling, jazz-tinged style of Romantic orchestral music, there is also a faint air of surrealism to much of the music here which joins the dots between Howl’s Moving Castle and Disney’s Fantasia - a fitting link, given how both are animated films that deal in magic and mystery.