Congratulations to Toshio Hosokawa! As the BBVA Foundation announced at a press conference on 4 March, he will receive the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the field of music and opera.
His 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.”
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.
