TOSHIO HOSOKAWA (b.1955): Meditation - to the victims of Tsunami 3.11 for Orchestra, Nach dem Sturm for 2 Sopranos and Orchestra, Klage for Mezzo-Soprano and Orchestra, Autumn Wind for Shakuhachi and Orchestra.

Description: Volume 2 of this series (10Q084), along with the various releases of Hosokawa's chamber music, demonstrate the composer's preoccupation with the natural world and his aptitude for representing it in music through his organic, evolving, sonorous textures. This release continues this personal tradition, only these works, all written since the devastating earthquake and tsunami of 2011, depict an altogether darker, more foreboding and hostile Nature. Meditation was written explicitly in memory of the victims. It is punctuated by bass drum strokes, like a colossal heartbeat, over which melodic fragments like calligraphy coalesce into a lament. The drum motif is joined by other percussion and the full orchestra in cumulative waves of sound that terrifyingly suggest the inexorable power of the onrush of waters. The first part of Nach dem Sturm is a swirling orchestral depiction of the storm, then in the hushed, uneasy, lyrical second half the voices enter to sing Blumen nach einem Unwetter by Hermann Hesse, in which flowers weather the tempest. Klage was inspired by the image of a woman mourning by the sea. An 'astronomical pulse' is established at the outset, with swirling wave motion in the orchestra. This increases in intensity and chaos, while the soloist sings a despairing text and the disturbing poem "Klage", with its imagery of destruction by water, by Georg Trakl. Autumn Wind is a concertante work for shakuhachi which depicts the human voyager in the breathy sound of the flute, and the world of nature in the organic masses of the orchestral backdrop.German-English texts. Susanne Elmark, Ilse Eerens (sopranos). Mihoko Fujimura (mezzo), Tadashi Tajima (shakuhachi), Basque National Orchestra; Jun Märkl.