Toshio

Toshio Hosokawa - Silent Flowers - String Quartets (2013) {WERGO WER 6761 2, Arditti Quartet}
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© 2013 WERGO / Schott Music | WER 6761 2
Classical / Contemporary Classical / Modern Classical / Chamber Music

The quartets of Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa presented here bring to mind a fusion of Western avant-garde textures and extended instrumental techniques with traditional Japanese aesthetics. It's an immensely absorbing combination, and his music appears to have evolved over the years in a more Japanese direction while not losing any of its innovative qualities. Consider the opening work, Blossoming, which true to its name depicts the blossoming of a flower. It sounds like a hackneyed concept, but the realization here is striking: the action unfolds over nearly 14 minutes coalescing out of silence and then a panoply of minute details.

DEEP SILENCE is a most apropos title for this collection of works by Toshio Hosokawa as well as traditional Japanese music. The compositions are for accordion (Stefan Hussong) and sh'o (Mayumi Miyata), both individually and in duet. The sound produced here is one of ethereal beauty, more of a continuous flow of tone than a moveable line, but that is what makes is such perfect music for meditation.

Toshio Hosokawa is a Japanese composer born in Hiroshima. This release brings together three concertos written by Hosokawa since his first mature works in the late eighties. They range over a period of roughly ten years, and are each marked by similar musical concerns, concerns treated in different ways according to the particular instrumental forces utilised.