Toshio Hosokawa: Solo Concertos Vol. 2

Transformation and journeys within

Through Isang Yun, his first composition teacher in Germany, Toshio Hosokawa understood »what it means to be Asian«. It was then that he became acquainted with post-serial new music, a music of colorful soundscapes in which Yun incorporated East Asian stylistic elements such as sustained sounds, various types of glissando and pizzicato, and countless ornaments. Yun conveyed to him the effects of yin and yang in music, and through Tôru Takemitsu, who was a role model for him for many years and whom he also met personally in the early 1980s, he learned about the aesthetics of silence, which is essential for the development of his personal style became.

»Silence or emptiness – that can also be shadow. Silence and sounds, shadow and light – that too is yin and yang. You can interpret it in many different ways... Takemitsu influenced me a lot here; he demanded sounds ›as strong as silence‹.« Another influence came from Helmut Lachenmann: noisy, alienated sounds contributed to the orchestra becoming an instrument for its own special musical language, with Hosokawa particularly differentiating the piano area and further developed. Hosokawa succeeds in bringing the timbres of the individual instruments and groups of instruments closer together in such a way that a uniform, homogeneous color is created and his orchestral tuttis often unfold a sound that breathes like an organ.

Takemitsu also practically promoted Hosokawa by getting him performances at festivals in Tokyo 1982 (Music Today), London 1991 or Seattle 1992. His death on February 20, 1996 (only a few months after Isang Yun's death on November 3, 1995) triggered a dismay that led to two in memoriam compositions: The Requiem was composed for the children's choir »Little Singers of Tokyo« Singing Trees (1996/97) and commissioned for a portrait concert at Suntory Hall in Tokyo in 1997 Cello Concerto – In memory of Toru Takemitsu (1997). This second in memoriam composition that Hosokawa wrote for Takemitsu also appears as a kind of requiem.

Premiered on October 6, 1997 by Julius Berger and the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra conducted by Naohiro Totsuka, the work has four parts that perhaps suggest a life story. Long, drawn-out tones that gradually rise are contrasted with a second level of earthy, deep sounds; a catastrophic tutti closes the first part. The cello also dominates the second part, in which various pizzicato effects and falling gestures are incorporated. The slow third part seems collectively shadowy, in which individual sounds of the orchestra, which symbolize nature or the outer world, emerge and enter into a dialogue with the cello. The cellist's solo cadenza is followed by an elevation; the ascent to a higher world removed from this world is at least hinted at.

As a Voyage Hosokawa describes a series of solo concertos in which the soloist, the lyrical I, is not confronted with an orchestra but with the smaller cast of an instrumental ensemble. Voyage means »journey inward«, a breathing meditation in which the technique of »circulating time«, »coming and going«, breathing out and in is essential for the compositional organization of the moving sound.

Voyage VII for trumpet and strings with percussion (2005), a work commissioned by Norddeutscher Rundfunk (for the concert series ›dasneue werk‹), was performed in Hamburg on July 17, 2005 by an ensemble from the Orchestra Academy of the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival conducted by Toshio Hosokawa Premiered. He dedicated Voyage VII the soloist of this premiere, the Belgian trumpeter Jeroen Berwaerts.

At the beginning, Hosokawa »paints« wind noises, eliciting ethereal harmonic effects from the slowly glissanding strings. Hosokawa cleverly develops the (initially controlled) voice of the trumpet. He links the initially shorter phrases into longer and more finely woven melodic formations, culminating in a great dramatic climax. A coda brings the retreat into the interior.

Metamorphosis for clarinet and string orchestra with percussion (2000) was written for the Lucerne Festival, which in 2000 had the motto »Metamorphoses«. Sabine Meyer, to whom the work is dedicated, performed the premiere with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe conducted by Heinz Holliger. In this composition, the string orchestra is supplemented by an echo orchestra (six violins, cello, double bass) in order to achieve differentiated spatial acoustic sound effects. (In the cello concerto, Hosokawa also uses an echo group, an echo of the brass). This piece also follows a dramaturgy of escalation and gives the impression of a drama that takes place without words. The title Metamorphosis Hosokawa refers to the juxtaposition and combination, to the growth and networking of musical cells: high and low registers, wide sweeping upward gestures, breaks, softly swaying cantabile, swinging expansion in space, union with the orchestral sound, solo cadence and natural, spatial finish .

Walter Wolfgang Sparrer