Toshio Hosokawa
Japan, °1955
Toshio Hosokawa was born in Hiroshima in 1955. He studied composition under Isang Yun at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin and under Klaus Huber at the Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg. In 1980, he took part for the first time in the Internationale Ferienkurse fur Neue Musik in Darmstadt. Since then, he has been commissioned to compose works for the leading orchestras, festivals, and opera houses of Europe, America, and Asia.
Many of his works have been premiered by eminent conductors such as Kazushi Ono, Jun Märkl, Kent Nagano, Sir Simon Rattle, and Robin Ticciati. Those works include Hanjo, his second opera, commissioned by the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence in 2004, the orchestral work Circulating Ocean, premiered by the Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Festival in 2005, and Woven Dreams, an orchestral work composed for the Lucerne Festival and Carnegie Hall, for which he received the International British Composer Award in 2013. In 2011, two further major works by Toshio Hosokawa were given their premieres : his third opera, Matsukaze, at La Monnaie/De Munt and his horn concerto, Moment of Blossoming, performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker. Several of his works were performed at the 2013 Salzburg Festival, including two premieres : Klage for soprano and orchestra and Ancient Voices for wind quintet. In 2014, he won the Otaka Prize for the third time, for his trumpet concerto Im Nebel.
In recent works, Toshio Hosokawa has sought to describe the relations between nature and humanity in works that he has presented as prayers or requiems. A number of works were premiered in the course of 2014, including Aeolus, Fluss, and Drei Engel-Lieder. In 2015, Nach dem Sturm, for two sopranos and orchestra, was commissioned for the 50th birthday of the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. In 2016, his latest opera, Stilles Meer (original text and direction by Oriza Hirata), describing the city of Fukushima some years after the earthquake that struck eastern Japan in 2011, was a big success with the public.
In 2001, Toshio Hosokawa was made a member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. He was composer in residence with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra from 1998 to 2007, with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester in 2006-2007, with the WDR Rundfunkchor in 2006-2008, and with the Nederlands Philharmonisch Orkest in 2013-2014. In 2012, he was elected a member of the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Kunste in Munich ; that same year, he was awarded the Medal of Honour with Purple Ribbon by the Government of Japan.
He is currently Music Director of the Takefu International Music Festival and Guest Professor at Tokyo College of Music and at Elisabeth University of Music in Hiroshima.
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