Joseph Kosma wrote “Les Feuilles mortes” for the 1946 film Les Portes de la nuit, with lyrics by the poet Jacques Prévert; as “Autumn Leaves” it became one of the most recorded songs on earth. Tōru Takemitsu, Japan's greatest twentieth-century composer and a lifelong lover of chanson and jazz, made this tender string-quartet arrangement as an affectionate encore piece: the familiar falling melody drifts through luminous, gently dissonant harmonies, like leaves caught in slow motion.
