The first major composer portrait of Toshio Hosokawa in the United States is presented by the Austrian Cultural Forum New York on Thursday, October 8 as the JACK Quartet perform his four string quartets Urbilder, Silent Flowers, Blossoming and Kalligraphie. Silent Flowers and Blossoming, composed in 1998 and 2007, respectively, grew out of the composer's fascination with the Japanese style of flower arrangement Ikebana. The art of Ikebana, to Hosokawa, is characterized not only by the delicacy and the beauty of blooming but also a wilting to nothingness. In this vein, Hosokawa aims to depict the idea of decay over time using, as he puts it, "newly born sounds with a very short life span."

Toshio Hosokawa has made a name for himself in the new music scenes of both Japan and Europe. His critically acclaimed opera Vision of Lear premiered at the Munich Biennale in 1998 and was cited as "a work inspired by the encounter of East and West which has opened up a new musical world." Recent premieres include his second opera Hanjo at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence in 2004 and Circulating Ocean for orchestra, premiered by the Vienna Philharmonic and Valery Gergiev at the Salzburg Festival in 2005. Circulating Ocean saw its German premiere with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin with Kent Nagano in 2007. His work Lotus under the moonlight for piano and orchestra was premiered by the North German Radio Symphony Orchestra on the occasion of the Mozart Year 2006 and further performances of this work were held in Japan by pianist Momo Kodama and the Mito Chamber Orchestra under Seiji Ozawa in 2006.

Bruce Hodges leads a discussion with Toshio Hosokawa at the concert at the Austrian Cultural Forum.

Catch up on all happenings at the Austrian Cultural Forum at www.acfny.org.

Silent Flowers (1998)
15'

Blossoming (2007)
15'

Kalligraphie (2007)
17'