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Katrin Matzke-Baazougkm@karstenwitt.com +49 30 214 594-213
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For his music building bridges between cultures, Toshio Hosokawa has been awarded the Goethe Medal.
Toshio Hosokawa's opera Erdbeben. Träume leads on a journey that shows the human capacity for mass violence and both the ferocity and the grace of nature.
Toshio Hosokawa about his opera Stilles Meer and the 2011 Fukushima catastrophe.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ridente la calma, K. 152
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Un moto di gioia, K. 579
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Das Veilchen, K. 476
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Als Luise die Briefe ihres ungetreuen Liebhabers verbrannte, K. 520
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Abendempfindung, K. 523
Gustav Mahler, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen
Alexander von Zemlinsky, Six Songs after Poems by Maurice Maeterlinck, Op. 13
Toshio Hosokawa, Two Japanese Lullabies
Toshio Hosokawa, composition
Mihoko Fujimura, mezzo-soprano
Wolfram Rieger, piano
Toshio Hosokawa, Erdbeben. Träume Suite
Symphoniker Hamburg
Sylvain Cambreling, conductor
Toshio Hosokawa, Ave Maria
Jauna Muzika, choir
Vaclovas Augustinas, conductor
Toshio Hosokawa, Circulating Ocean
Arvydas Malcys, New work (World premiere)
György Ligeti, Lontano
Toshio Hosokawa, "Genesis" for violin and orchestra
Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra
Akiko Suwanaï, violin
Victorien Vanoosten, conductor
Fazil Say, 1914
Francesco Filidei, Cello Concerto “I Giardini di Vilnius”
Toshio Hosokawa, Blossoming II for chamber orchestra
Thomas Adès, Violin Concerto “Concentric Paths”
Francesco Dillon, violoncello
Christian Tetzlaff, violin
Modestas Pitrėnas, conductor
Toshio Hosokawa, "Prayer" for violin and orchestra
Sayaka Shoji, violin
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Kahchun Wong, conductor
Toshio Hosokawa, Uzu for orchestra (2019)
Ralph Vaughan Williams, The Lark Ascending
Eugène Ysaye, Chant d'hiver, opus 15
Igor Strawinsky, Le chant du rossignol
Ottorino Respighi, Pini di Roma
Antwerp Symphony Orchestra
Jun Märkl, conductor
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. The organ concerto Umarmung, premiered in 2017 by Christian Schmitt and the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra under Jakub Hrůša, 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. The German premiere with the Duisburger Philharmoniker and Jonathan Stockhammer took place at the NOW! Festival in Essen in November 2022; the Dutch premiere with the Residentie Orkest under Jun Märkl will follow in March 2023. 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, where Toshio Hosokawa stayed as composer-in-residence.
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 the choreographer Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker and co-commissioned by the Brussels opera house La Monnaie and the Aix-en-Provence Festival, which has since been performed on numerous stages. The US premiere of Hanjo was presented by Catapult Opera in New York in September 2022 with Talea Ensemble and Neal Goren and choreographed by Luca Veggetti. In April 2023, Fondazione Haydn di Bolzano e Trento will bring this production to the Teatro Sociale di Trento. Another production with a choreography from Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui will be part of the 2023 edition of the „Ja, Mai“ festival organized by the Bayerische Staatsoper.
The opera Matsukaze, which like Hanjo is based on Japanese Noh theatre, was first performed in 2011 in choreographer Sasha Waltz's production at the La Monnaie opera house in Brussels and has been revived many times. The monodrama The Raven for mezzo-soprano and ensemble, premiered in Brussels in 2012, has also been staged in the meantime. 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 Bayer. In 2020, the musical material from the opera was also used to create the four-movement orchestral suite Erdbeben. Träume which was finally premiered in November 2022 by the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna under Marco Angius at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna. 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 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 XNozarashi for shakuhachi and ensemble. Traditional Japanese instruments such as the shō or koto also feature elsewhere in his oeuvre, which comprises 150 compositions.
In September 2022, the world premiere of Toshio Hosokawa’s Ceremony for flute and orchestra performed by Emmanuel Pahud with the Tonhalle Orchestra under Paavo Järvi opened the current season at the Tonhalle Zurich, and evoked an unanimous storm of enthusiasm. As Creative Chair of the Tonhalle for this season, Toshio Hosokawa’s works are featured in various concerts with the Tonhalle Orchestra as well as in chamber music formats. The Japanese premiere of Ceremony took place in October 2022 with the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa under Nodoka Okisawa.
Toshio Hosokawa started the year 2023 with a lectureship at the University of California, Berkeley where he was awarded the Berkeley Japan Prize 2023. In February, Stockholm Concert Hall will present the world premiere of 11 Japanese Songs for guitar solo performed by Jacob Kellermann, who will record all Toshio Hosokawa's solo pieces for guitar as well as Voyage IX with the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra under Christian Karlsen this year for a release on BIS.
Toshio Hosokawa’s new Violin Concerto Prayer has been premiered in March with Daishin Kashimoto as soloist and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Paavo Järvi. The Suisse premiere with the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester under Michael Sanderling at the KKL Luzern will follow in June and the Japanese premiere with Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra and Sebastian Weigle at Suntory Hall Tokyo in July.
Toshio Hosokawa will also be part of the project "Music for Vilnius 2023" intended to celebrate the 700th anniversary of the city of Vilnius. On this occasion, he wrote a new work for violin and accordion, which will be premiered in May 2023 at the Vilnius University.
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 2022/23
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.
"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, 15.06.2023
"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 the "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 the "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, 04/03/2023
“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.”
Tagespiegel, Ugo Badelt, 03/03/2023
"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, 03/03/2023
“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, 03/10/2022
“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, 7/12/21 - 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, 28/3/21
"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, 4/7/18
“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, 3/7/18
“In its global diction, its Asian-European sensibility and interconnected outlook, the music is fantastic.”
NMZ, Wolf Loeckle, 3/7/18
“What an urgent, touching, finely dazzling yet magically monochrome dream music [...].”
Die Deutsche Bühne, Klaus Kalchschmid, 2/7/18
“Starting with individual tones and intervals, Hosokawa opens up spiritual spaces and dreamlike images that point beyond themselves.”
Opernwelt, Albrecht Thiemann, 8/18
“[…] 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, 25/1/16
“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, 25/1/16
Toshio Hosokawa: "Prayer" for violin and orchestra, Daishin Kashimoto, Berliner Philharmoniker, Paavo Järvi, 4.3.2023 Philharmonie Berlin
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.
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