TOSHIO HOSOKAWA (b.1955): Landscape V for Sho and String Quartet, Threnody for Viola, Fragmente II for Recorder and String Quartet, Small Chant for Cello, Landscape II for Harp and String Quartet, Elegy for Violin.

Description: The fluid lines of Hosokawa's chamber works are an aural analogue of the expressive brush-strokes of Japanese calligraphy, precise and continuously evolving throughout their duration. The two works from the Landscape series conjure their evocative shapes on the blank spaces of silence - an important feature of Hosokawa's musical vocabulary - with constantly changing timbres produced by a wide range of playing techniques from the strings, colored by the distinctive sonic textures of the other instruments. The Threnody is a work of remarkable intensity, with the concentrated expressiveness of a precisely articulate line drawing. In the Fragmente, the 'silence' is textured by a constant timbrally varied drone, with lines of different densities and degrees of roughness of outline - literally produced by different degrees of pressure, here that of air, or bow on string - forming dramatic foreground figuration. Arditti String Quartet, Mayumi Miyata (sho), Naoko Yoshino (harp), Tosiya Suzuki (recorder).