TOSHIO HOSOKAWA

Landscapes

1. Landscape V, for shô and string quartet (1993) (version for shô & string orchestra)

2. Ceremonial Dance, for string orchestra (2000)

3. Sakura für Otto Tomek, for shô solo (2008)

4. Cloud and Light, for shô and orchestra (2008)

Mayumi Miyata (shô),

Münchener Kammerorchester / Alexander Liebreich

ECM’s ongoing series of recordings with the Munich Chamber Orchestra continues with an intriguing album of new and recent pieces by Japan’s leading composer Toshio Hosokawa. Amongst the compositions are Sakura für Otto Tomek and Cloud and Light, both written in 2008, and Ceremonial Dance (2000). These 21st century pieces are brought together with Landscape V (originally from 1993 and for string quartet, meanwhile expanded into an orchestral version). Three of these feature the shô, a traditional Japanese instrument played by its leading exponent, Mayumi Miyata.

Born in Hiroshima in 1955, Hosokawa was initially inspired by Western art music from Schubert to Schoenberg. He went to Germany in the 1970s to study with Isang Yun and Klaus Huber. As he strengthened his standing in European avant-garde he also put down deeper roots in Japanese traditional music. His work increasingly suggests a dialogue between East and West, between the archaic and modern, between ceremonial music and concert music. Hosokawa considers his compositional process instinctively associated with the concepts of Zen Buddhism and its symbolic interpretation of nature.

Hosokawa’s involvement with traditional music led him to study the shô, the ancient Japanese mouth organ with 17 bamboo pipes. In contemporary music the best known shô player is undoubtedly Mayumi Miyata who is featured here. On this disc Mayumi Miyata solos in Hosakawa’s music for strings and shô, and plays unaccompanied shô on Sakura (Cherry Blossoms), Hosakawa’s adaptation of a traditional Japanese piece.

At present Hosakawa is a name very much in the news in Europe, as his opera Matsukaze,with choreography by Sascha Walz, is at the Berlin Staatsoper and is receiving much positive media attention.

ECM New Series 4763938