Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra / Lothar Zagrosek

Mozart travelled as a child and teenager throughout Europe: he learnt and grew, sought further and grew immeasurably. A similar experience was fared by Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa, born in 1955. He came as a 21-year-old from Japan to Europe, studied and sought orientation in Western culture and consequently found his way back to his Japanese roots: »I’m looking for a new form of spiritual culture and music of the Japanese people,« he explains. The topics nature and transience play a special role for him: »Sound comes from the silence, it lives, and then it goes back into silence«!

These same words could have come from Gustav Mahler: his Symphony No. 1, another work addressing the act of seeking, was composed »with unconditional and unconscious courage in the innovation of expression, in the richness of the invention; it pulsates in the hot blood of passion« (Bruno Walter).