KRYZLER & KOMPANY -- Beautiful Dreamer

 

I'd heard this song all throughout my life in various forms on TV, but the first time I found out its title was, strangely enough, in Tim Burton's "Batman" (1989). "Beautiful Dreamer" was used as the Joker's theme (as heard from 1:32 in the above video) with arrangements ranging from pompous to tinny.

From what I read at Wikipedia, "Beautiful Dreamer" was created by American songwriter Stephen Foster and published posthumously in March 1864 (Foster had passed away earlier in January that year). Apparently, it was about a lovelorn fellow serenading/bereaving a lover who may have already departed this mortal coil.

Of course, "Beautiful Dreamer" has popped up here and there over the past century-and-a-half, and I found this happily waltzing version by this trio known as KRYZLER & KOMPANY. I'd first heard about this group that has been described in J-Wiki as a New Age band (though they can also do classical and fusion) through the pages of "Eye-Ai" a few decades ago, and it consisted of violinist Taro Hakase（葉加瀬太郎）, bassist Yoshinobu Takeshita（竹下欣伸）and keyboardist Tsuneyoshi Saito（斉藤恒芳）.

Hakase is someone that I saw frequently on television to the extent that I considered him to have TV personality status, and his wife, Mayuko Takada（髙田万由子）, is indeed a tarento herself. The violinist formed KRYZLER & KOMPANY with Takeshita and Saito in 1987 while attending Tokyo University of the Arts. The name of the trio supposedly originated from Fritz Kreisler, an Austrian-born violinist and composer who lived from 1875 to 1962. Initially, K&K was arranging some of the classics for their recordings but they gradually came to create their own original works.

According to Hakase's Wikipedia page, K&K reached a certain rock star status and their February 1991 second album "Kryzler And Company #" sold around 81,000 copies and reached No. 30 on Oricon which isn't too bad at all for a string trio. Their version of "Beautiful Dreamer" is on this album as well, and as I said above, it fairly waltzes across the soundscape with the soul of a late 80s AOR ballad. I think that there's even something Christmas-y in the arrangement as well. 

Their initial run was between 1990 and 1996 starting with their debut single which was their cover of Kreisler's "Liebesfreud" under the Japanese title of "Ai no Yorokobi"（愛の喜び） after which followed another seven singles. In addition, there were also seven albums including their most recent 2015 "New World" when K&K got together again during that year. That particular album hit No. 48 on the charts.