Congratulations to Toshio Hosokawa! As the BBVA Foundation announced at a press conference on 4 March, he is the 2025 awardee of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the field of music and opera.
Toshio Hosokawa's ability to weave multiple Japanese elements into his music, including gagaku (music of the Japanese imperial court), noh theater, and instruments as integral to the culture as the shakuhachi, shō, koto or shamisen, shines through in scores that have become “milestones of contemporary music, like the operas Hanjo (2004), recalling the ritual chants of old Japan, and Matsukaze (2011), which deploys an understated but profoundly expressive lyricism,” in the words of the committee.
The synthesis between East and West that the laureate embodies is just one of the distinctive characteristics that have earned him the award, according to committee chair Gabriela Ortiz. For this composer and Professor of Composition at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Hosokawa has achieved this combination “in a manner that is both personal and frankly dazzling, with a voice uniquely his own that fuses the two cultures with breathtaking skill. From the formal point of view, in his music silence becomes a structural element, it is part of his musical thought – an element of reflection that he draws from Eastern culture.”
Toshio Hosokawa has received the prize at a ceremony in Bilbao on 19 June 2025. In his acceptance speech, he reflected on how his music tries to conjure the “vast, endless ‘sea of sound’ that lies deep within the human heart.” In his creative process, said the Japanese composer, he sees himself as a connecting vessel between nature and sound: “From the vibrations of that sea, words and music are born. This sea may be what depth psychology refers to as the ‘collective unconscious’ or what Buddhism calls the ‘Alaya consciousness.’ My composition is the process of listening to the vibrations that emerge from it and transcribing them onto sheet music. It is not my ego that composes; I become a medium that listens to the voice of the sea.”
The evening before, Toshio Hosokawa's violin concerto Genesis, performed by Akiko Suwanai together with the Basque National Orchestra under the direction of Fabián Panisello, was heard at a gala concert. This was the conductor's debut with the orchestra, which also performed works by Bach (transcribed by Webern) and Walton under his direction.
The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards have been granted by the Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) Foundation since 2008 and are endowed with 400,000 euros each. The prizes are awarded in eight categories, including basic sciences, biology and biomedicine as well as information and communication technologies.
Previous winners in the music and opera category include Helmut Lachenmann, Pierre Boulez, Steve Reich, Sofia Gubaidulina and George Benjamin.
