Toshio Hosokawa, Erwin Koch-Raphael, Misato Mochizuki, Annette Schlünz, Yuji Takahashi, et al.: three haikei and more

Three haikei and more
Music for recorder and koto

How does 'modern' music sound in the age of global consciousness? three haikei and more addresses this question using the example of traditional music and new works that refer to the Japanese musical tradition.

The koto (the Japanese zither instrument) originally came to Japan from China in the Nara period (8th century) as one of the instruments of gagaku music. It later developed into a solo instrument, the main traditional repertoire of which dates back to Yatsuhashi Kengyô in the 17th century.

The recorder had its place in music history (contemporaneously with the koto) especially during the Baroque period in the 17th and early 18th centuries. In the course of the early music movement of the 20th century, it became a concert instrument for which more and more works by contemporary composers are now being created.

The koto and the recorder are present in their respective cultures in both folk and art music. The composers of the commissioned works for Makiko Goto and Jeremias Schwarzer were therefore able to obtain their material from extensive musical fields of association.

The project three haikei and more was supported by orders from Deutschlandfunk (FORUM NEUE MUSIK 2006) and the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation (sponsorship award 2005). The sounding results could hardly have been more different. But there is also something unusual to be experienced here in relation to traditional Japanese music – not a single piece is performed with an ›original‹ instrumentation.

Even if the old Japanese Zen pieces Daha and  yamagoe be played on a recorder, but its sounds are so different from the tones of the Japanese bamboo flute shakuhachi that one cannot speak of a performance of these works in the sense of their tradition. The character of these pieces as a musical expression of stations or states on the spiritual journey (Yamagoe means 'walk over the mountain' as a symbol of the difficulties to be overcome, Daha symbolizes the necessary self-discipline) remains intact.

Rokudan no Shirabe (›Music in Six Sections‹) by Yatsuhasi Kengyo (1614–1685) is heard here in an abridged version. While the original builds from a leisurely beginning to a rapid final section, this version consists of the successive parts I, IV and VI, which bring more variety to the musical events through the clearly perceptible increase in speed.

Erwin Koch-Raphael (*1949) and Toshio Hosokawa (*1955) both studied with Isang Yun in Berlin. In their works presented here, both explicitly refer to the Japanese musical language.

Während Toshio Hosokawa in his early work nocturne (1982) creates a piece of modern ritual music, the piece emerges snowdrop (2009) from organic musical cells, each of which develops in a circle around a few central tones, before finally returning to silence. For Hosokawa, the title, in addition to the image of the first spring flower, refers to the tremendous force that this plant expends in order to get through the frozen ground of winter to the outside world.

Erwin Koch-Raphaels multi-part duo shogo/noonday (2005) is perhaps the piece on this CD that sounds most purely ›Asian‹: here the silence between the sounds becomes particularly clear, comparable to the principles of a Japanese garden.

Misato Mochizuki (*1969) writes modern music beyond the cultural burden of meaning. Energetic and vital, almost always with a pulsating rhythm, she uses 'Western' and 'Asian' instruments as sound bodies in her works, from which she eavesdrops their inherent liveliness.

Annette Schlunz (*1964) achieves something ›Asian‹ in many of their works. She transforms seemingly sparse musical ›small parts‹ into energetic cells that seem to have a life of their own. It is not the elements she uses, but her composing that evokes this vibrancy.

Yuji takahashi (*1938) presents in his conceptual composition koto nado asobi There are various ways in which a soloist can be accompanied and supported by one or more players. In recorder nado asobi we have reversed the relationships: now the recorder sound is the focus.

For this recording, the various Koto instruments and the playing positions of the musicians were distributed in both versions in space, so that a spatial path was always covered between the different sound events, which becomes audible through the surround recording.

Jeremiah Schwarzer