Toshio Hosokawa

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.

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.