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Katrin Matzke-Baazougkm@karstenwitt.com +49 30 214 594-213
General Management
From 29 November to 25 January, Toshio Hosokawa's opera Hanjo will be shown in Schwerin, staged by Judith Lebiez - the 20th new production of the work since its premiere in 2004.
Toshio Hosokawa's complete works for guitar have now been released as a CD on the BIS records label, recorded by Jacob Kellermann with soprano Ilse Eerens and the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra under Christian Karlsen.
In June, the fourth CD with orchestral works by Toshio Hosokawa was released on the Naxos label, including his trumpet concerto Im Nebel, which Jeroen Berwaerts recorded together with the Residentie Orkest under Jun Märkl.
Toshio Hosokawa, Violin Concerto
Franz Schubert, Symphony No. 8 C-major D 944 "The great"
Toshio Hosokawa, composition
Orquesta de València
Alexander Liebreich, conductor
Peter Tschaikowsky, Dornröschen op. 66 (Auszüge)
Toshio Hosokawa, Ferne Landschaft II
Martin Schläpfer, choreography
Marius Petipa, choreography
Toshio Hosokawa, Memory – In Memory of Isang Yun
Toshio Hosokawa, Hanjo
Mecklenburgische Staatskapelle Schwerin
Aki Schmitt, conductor
Judith Lebiez, stage direction
Hanna Larissa Naujoks, mezzo-soprano(Jitsuko Honda, a spinster)
Anna Cavaliero, soprano(Hanako, a mad girl)
Martin Gerke, baritone(Yoshio, a young man)
Toshio Hosokawa, Prayer
Daishin Kashimoto, violin
Tito Ceccherini, conductor
Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra
Toshio Hosokawa, Verlust (Loss)
Sonja Kowollik, piano
Toshio Hosokawa, Landscape II (Fassung für Harfe und Streichquartett)
Lena - Maria Buchberger, harp
Kizuna-Quartett, string quartet
Toshio Hosokawa, Meditation
Tōru Takemitsu, Archipelago S.
Toshio Hosokawa, Futari Shizuka (The Maiden from the Sea)
Ryoko Aoki, Noh singer/performer
Christina Daletska, soprano
Toshio Hosokawa, Im Nebel
Jhih-Ting Wong, piano
Krieger, Tobias, trumpet
Sandro Hirsch, trumpet
Toshio Hosokawa, Matsukaze
Münchener Kammerorchester
Alexandre Bloch, conductor
Seonwoo Lee, soprano
Natalie Lewis, mezzo-soprano
Paweł Horodyski, bass
Bruno Khouri, bass-baritone
Lotte van den Berg, stage direction
Tobias Staab, stage direction
Toshio Hosokawa, Natasha
Ilse Eerens, soprano(Natasha)
Hiroka Yamashita, mezzo-soprano(Arato)
Christian Miedl, baritone(Mephistos Enkel)
Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra
New National Theatre Chorus, choir
Kazushi Ono, conductor
Christian Räth, stage direction
Yoko Tawada, libretto
I am searching for a new form of Japanese spiritual culture and music, one through which I can remain true to myself as well as to my origins. We need to examine the Western world again, more carefully, in order to see ourselves objectively and to truly get to know ourselves.
Toshio Hosokawa, Japan’s pre-eminent living composer, creates his distinctive musical language from the fascinating relationship between Western avant-garde art and traditional Japanese culture. His music is strongly connected to the aesthetic and spiritual roots of the Japanese arts (such as calligraphy), as well as to those of Japanese court music (such as Gagaku). He gives musical expression to notions of beauty rooted in transience: “We hear the individual notes and appreciate, at the same time, the process of how the notes are born and then die: a sound landscape of continual ‘becoming’ that is animated in itself.”
Born in Hiroshima in 1955, Toshio Hosokawa came to Germany in 1976, where he studied composition with Isang Yun, Brian Ferneyhough, and later, Klaus Huber. Although his initial compositions drew inspiration from the Western avant-garde, he gradually built a new musical world between East and West. He first gained widespread recognition with the 2001 world premiere of his oratorio Voiceless Voice in Hiroshima.
Toshio Hosokawa has written numerous orchestral works in recent years, including After the Storm for two sopranos and orchestra on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, and Woven Dreams, commissioned as part of the Roche Commissions (Cleveland Orchestra, Franz Welser-Möst, Lucerne Festival 2010). Circulating Ocean, premiered by the Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Festival in 2005, has also become part of the repertoire of many orchestras. Toshio Hosokawa continues to compose works that focus on nature themes, such as the horn concerto Moment of Blossoming for Stefan Dohr and the Berlin Philharmonic (2011). Since 2003, he has been composing a loose sequence entitled Voyages for solo instrument and ensemble. In some of these works he combines Japanese and European instruments, as in Voyages X Nozarashi for shakuhachi and ensemble. Traditional Japanese instruments such as the shō or koto also feature elsewhere in his oeuvre, which comprises some 200 compositions.
The organ concerto Umarmung, premiered in 2017 by Christian Schmitt and the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, was performed by the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna at the Vienna Konzerthaus in 2018 and again at Suntory Hall in 2019. The orchestral work Uzu, premiered in 2019 by the Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra, received the Otaka Prize for the best Japanese composition of the year. It was last heard in February 2024 as a Dutch premiere with the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra under Jun Märkl. In 2021, his violin concerto Genesis for soloist Veronika Eberle, a commission from the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra (SOČR), and the Grafenegg Festival, was premiered in Grafenegg.
In 2022, the world premiere of Ceremony for flute and orchestra, played by Emmanuel Pahud with the Tonhalle Orchestra under Paavo Järvi, caused a storm of enthusiasm in Zurich. The Japanese premiere took place with the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa under Nodoka Okisawa; the German premiere followed in February 2024 with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra under Kent Nagano and soloist Daniela Koch. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Paavo Järvi premiered the violin concerto Prayer together with soloist Daishin Kashimoto in March 2023, followed by the Swiss premiere with the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra under Michael Sanderling and the Japanese premiere with the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra and Sebastian Weigle. The British premiere took place in February 2024 at the Barbican Centre in London with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Kahchun Wong with violinist Sayaka Shoji. For the Music for Vilnius project to mark the city's 700th anniversary, Toshio Hosokawa wrote Vilnius Invisible Angels for violin and accordion. He returned to Vilnius in autumn 2023 as a guest composer at the Gaida Festival. Highlights of the last season include the Japanese premiere of his work Texture at the Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall by the Philharmonic Octet Berlin, as well as the world premiere of the piano quintet Oreksis to mark the 50th anniversary of the Arditti Quartet at the Pierre Boulez Saal Berlin. In May 2024, the Kammerakademie Potsdam premiered In the Forest for chamber orchestra under Bas Wiegers.
The current season is centred around creating his new opera Natasha, which is due to premiere in August 2025 at the New National Theatre under the direction of Kazushi Ono with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra in a production by Christian Räth; the multilingual libretto was written by the Berlin-based Japanese writer Yoko Tawada. As composer-in-residence, Toshio Hosokawa will also be a guest of the Valencia Orchestra, which will dedicate two concerts to him under its chief conductor Alexander Liebreich; among other works, the violin concerto Genesis with Veronika Eberle and the one-act melodrama Futari Shizuka (The Maiden from the Sea) will be performed. A short solo piece will be created for the Stuttgart University of Music's guitar competition, and another solo work for violinist Francesco D'Orazio will be premiered at the Teatro Argentina in Rome in May 2025.
Many of Toshio Hosokawa's music theatre works are now part of the repertoire of major opera houses. His first opera Vision of Lear, which was received with great praise at the 1998 Munich Biennale, was followed in 2004 by Hanjo, a work staged by choreographer Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker and co-commissioned by the Brussels opera house La Monnaie and the Aix-en-Provence Festival. It has since been performed on numerous stages, most recently in 2022 as the American premiere at the Catapult Opera in New York with the Talea Ensemble and in 2023 in a further production with choreography by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui at the Bavarian State Opera. The opera Matsukaze, which, like Hanjo, is based on material from Japanese Nô theatre, will be performed there again in 2025 as part of the Ja, Mai festival. The work, which has since been performed many times, was first staged by choreographer Sasha Waltz at La Monnaie opera house in Brussels in 2011. The monodrama The Raven for mezzo-soprano and ensemble, premiered in Brussels in 2012, was also staged in several theatrical performances.
In quick succession, Toshio Hosokawa has presented three more operas: Stilles Meer debuted at the Hamburg State Opera in 2016, the one-act melodrama Futari Shizuka (The Maiden from the Sea) premiered in Paris in 2017 and was followed in 2018 by Erdbeben. Träume at Stuttgart Opera, based on a libretto by Büchner Prize winner Marcel Beyer. The musical material of the opera was used to create the four-movement orchestral suite Erdbeben. Träume, which was premiered in November 2022 by the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna under Marco Angius and whose revised version was first performed by the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra under Sylvain Cambreling at the Elbphilharmonie in 2023. In 2021, the musical fairy tale Deine Freunde aus der Ferne, in which Toshio Hosokawa and writer Yoko Tawada take the young audience on a dream journey to distant worlds, was launched at the Philharmonie Luxembourg by the ensemble United Instruments of Lucilin and narrator Salome Kammer.
Toshio Hosokawa has received numerous awards and prizes. He has been a member of the Academy of Fine Arts Berlin since 2001 and was a fellow of Berlin’s Institute for Advanced Study in 2006/7 and 2008/9. In 2013/14 he was composer in residence at the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra as well as at the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra from 2019 till 2021. In 2018 he received the Japan Foundation award, and in 2021 he was awarded the Goethe Medal for his services to cultural exchange between Japan and Germany. He is artistic director of the Takefu International Music Festival and artistic director of the Suntory Hall International Program for Music Composition.
Season 2024/25
This biography is to be reproduced without any changes, omissions or additions, unless expressly authorised by the artist management.
A list of all works by Toshio Hosokawa can be found on the Schott Music website.
“The music proceeds in wave-like increases up to a cry; followed by a heartfelt plea (‘O Licht des Mondes, erleuchte mich’), reminiscent of a liturgical chant. Finally, the sound fades away between humming, breathing, wind noises – an incredibly impressive effect; it nearly sounds dematerialized.”
Pamina Magazin, Christine Gehringer, 31/7/2023 – about From the Darkness – Kuraki yori – Aus der Dunkelheit
“A haunting work which, despite this basic spiritual attitude, maintains the tension to the end and offered grateful challenges to the exquisite violinist.”
Luzerner Zeitung, Urs Mattenberger, 15/6/2023 – about Prayer
“Hosokawa has […] striven for maximum text comprehensibility, and his very dense music, glowing inwardly but almost always flowing with maximum calm, does not double the feelings but rather sublimates them on a higher level.”
Abendzeitung München, Robert Braunmüller, 8.5.2023 – about Hanjo, performance at the Bavarian State Opera on 5/5/2023
“The seemingly still sound surfaces, which were disrupted and enlivened by soaring, sometimes shrill woodwind and brass passages, were fascinating. The confrontation of the unreal and reality becomes audible in the music. Above it, Hosokawa unfolds the cantabile, expressive, characterising vocal lines of the three protagonists.”
Münchner Merkur, Gabriele Luster, 8/5/2023 – about Hanjo, performance at the Bavarian State Opera on 5/5/2023
“Beginning on the edge of audibility, Toshio Hosokawa’s Prayer […] also involves contemplation, complemented by subtle colours and dynamics (the orchestra is large though, including harp, celesta and plentiful percussion), slow-burn music that seems to evoke an undisclosed narrative […]. The music’s progress becomes restless, quickening, loud brassy outbursts interrupting private thoughts that are also universal, helping to span the twenty-five-minute whole with suspense and drama leading to an enchanted conclusion.”
colinscolumn.com, 4/3/2023
“Hosokawa stages the contrast between nature and man in the form of the solo violin, which repeatedly rebels against fate […]. The music […] is refreshingly raw and austere.”
Tagesspiegel, Udo Badelt, 3/3/2023
“The violin concerto Prayer, composed in 2022, shows sonic lines of connection to Messiaen’s tonal language, for the music of the 67-year-old Japanese composer combines elements of impressionism with sounds of modernism and traditional Asian music. Like Messiaen’s music, the works of the Zen Buddhist Hosokawa are often characterised by a deep religiousness, as the title Prayer of the violin concerto shows.”
Berliner Morgenpost, Mario-Felix Vogt, 3/3/2023
“The atmosphere was gripping, and the score matched flawlessly. Hosokawa’s composition brilliantly contrasts a fervent excitement in this highly characterized score with a sophisticated nod towards modernism, all against the frozen hope of emotions revealed by the figures on stage. Talea Ensemble and Catapult’s production interpreted the opera with an abstract delicacy that revealed meaning much more powerfully than previous, more visually aggressive stagings of the work. […] This miniature production of vast proportions was successful in its simplicity and clarity, and memorable for its breathtaking score with equally flawless performances. Hosokawa’s work in the hands of the Catapult Opera is a testament against that brazen phrase: go big or go home. Quite preferable, in fact, to stay small and be bold.”
Seen and Heard International, Daniele Sahr, 3/10/2022
“The new concert season of the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich begins with the opposite of a timpani roll: a tone-less note […] the tone paradox is the prelude to a masterpiece. […] You don’t have to be a prophet to predict that all flautists will pounce on this piece by Toshio Hosokawa entitled Ceremony. The most important Japanese composer of our time has given them a full-blown modern solo concerto in five contrasting movements. They form an uninterrupted, gripping and richly shaped narrative. […] Even more important, however, is the eloquent poetry that carries the whole piece. It makes this piece, which works uncompromisingly with the most modern playing techniques, surprisingly accessible.”
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Christian Wildhagen, 15/9/2022
“Toshio Hosokawa, who certainly did not find it difficult to set a tale from his homeland to music, […] created a varied panorama of tones and sounds that did justice to the different situations with string trio, flutes, and clarinets, as well as piano and richly scored and demanding percussion, from onomatopoeic expressions and lyrical moments to atonal passages. […] As always, the ensemble United Instruments of Lucilin performed in top form and with the necessary sensitivity. […] this musical theatre [offered] an entertaining and also thought-provoking story, which did not fail to appeal to the children.”
Pizzicato.lu, Uwe Krusch, 7/12/2021 – about Deine Freunde aus der Ferne
“From extreme depths to heights, we dive into the abyss before rising to the surface again and then reaching a boundless sky. The richness of the composer’s sound universe gives rise to a thousand images of the lotus blooming in the moonlight.”
france musique, 28/3/2021
“The subtlety of his work is striking, the effect of ebb and flow, the moments of stillness and the beauty of an unspecified landscape.”
Opus Klassik, Aart van der Wal, March 2021 – about SOLO
“Hosokawa works with stark, dramatic contrasts, eruptive percussion included. […] This creates tremendous tension and, at the same time, a fascinatingly sensual effect.”
Neue Züricher Zeitung, Marco Frei, 4/7/2018
“Hosokawa does not merely illustrate the world’s terror in his music. He succeeds with what seems with words impossible at the moment, the ultimate trick, banishing this terror in and through his music.”
Süddeutsche Zeitung, Reinhard J. Brembeck, 3/7/2018
“In its global diction, its Asian-European sensibility and interconnected outlook, the music is fantastic.”
NMZ, Wolf Loeckle, 3/7/2018
“What an urgent, touching, finely dazzling yet magically monochrome dream music […].”
Die Deutsche Bühne, Klaus Kalchschmid, 2/7/2018
“Starting with individual tones and intervals, Hosokawa opens up spiritual spaces and dreamlike images that point beyond themselves.”
Opernwelt, Albrecht Thiemann, 8/2018
“[…] clearly told, aurally plausible and full of elaborate sub-surficial references. […] Hosokawa’s sounds are so finely tuned, they generate a real undertow with timbral sensuality and without hyper avant-garde flourishes. The timbres of the three main characters Claudia, Stephan and Haruko fuse momentarily and immediately disentangle themselves again. […] In this way the sound links together with the voices on the stage to produce one breathing whole.”
nmz online, Verena Fischer-Zernin, 25/1/2016
“A tremendously subtle, tentative drama unfolds in consistent dialogue with the music thanks to the delicate rearranging of the characters in the space; an intense interaction with moments of tension, ultimately a kind of ‘waiting set to music’.”
BR-KLASSIK, Jörn Florian Fuchs, 25/1/2016
Toshio Hosokawa: "Prayer" for violin and orchestra, Daishin Kashimoto, Berliner Philharmoniker, Paavo Järvi, 4.3.2023 Philharmonie Berlin
Toshio Hosokawa: Awakening, Music For Guitar – Jacob Kellermann
United Instruments of Lucilin's Profiles - Toshio Hosokawa
Toshio Hosokawa - Regentanz (2018) | WDR 3
Toshio Hosokawa – Sen VI (1993) | WDR 3
Toshio Hosokawa: Blossoming II (2011) (Hong Kong Première)
Stilles Meer | Toshio Hosokawa
Toshio Hosokawa and Stefan Dohr in conversation
In this short chamber opera, which is inspired by the traditional Noh play Futari Shizuka (The Two Shizukas), Toshio Hosokawa's music tells the unique story of the encounter of an ancient Japanese ghost with a present-day refugee.The libretto, written by Oriza Hirata is sung both in English and Japanese: a migrant woman, Helen (soprano), is lost on a beach shore where she meets another woman, who has been lost in the snow for nine centuries: The Ghost of Lady Shizuka. They share a tragic fate, caused by men’s wars, but their encounter might change their paths.
Jacob Kellermann, Ilse Eerens, Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, Christian Karlsen;
BIS, 2024, 0002745BIS
Ilse Eerens, Tomoko Kasai, Mayumi Miyata, Masanori Oishi, Saori Oya, Naoko Yoshino;
Echizen City Cultural Center;
Kairos, 2024, 0022040KAI
Klangforum Wien;KAIROS, 2020, 0015095KAI
Momo Kodama;ECM Records, 2017, ECM 2509
Arditti Quartet, Mayumi Miyata, Naoko Yoshino, Tosiya Suzuki;WERGO, 2014, WER 6769 2
Arditti Quartet;WERGO, 2013, WER 6761 2