Sounds & Clouds

Holland Baroque

16,9928,49
(12 press reviews)
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Original Recording Format: DSD 64
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The blank spaces on the paper have their own tension, known in Japanese as ma. That tension can be felt in music, between two sounds. Here Hosokawa sees a major difference between European and eastern music: ‘The only thing of importance [in western music] is perhaps the sonorous impact, the sound as of a cathedral where one finds eternity. We find beauty in a cherry tree, precisely because they blossom so briefly – eternity does not exist, we know no God. The flower withers, but next year the cherry tree blossoms anew. Sound is like such blossom, it comes and goes. The silences, the absence, are not empty but full of sound, if we were able to hear.’

Each sound, therefore, is born of silence, as a meditation, and here the rhythm of breathing is crucial for Hosokawa. Sounds grow and fade, the pauzes between the breaths determine the form. Together notes can form clusters, even sharp dissonances – for nature is seldom in full harmony – but they always return to individual notes and silence. Such a cyclic structure does not seek development, completion or repetition, but floats on ongoing movement and variation, which is likewise a significant contrast with western music. ‘In eastern thinking’, Hosokawa writes, ‘the voice (i.e. the sound) is born when the spirit itself is manifest in breath. The expression of this dynamic process, reflecting the sound of the spirit in breath and voice, this, for me as a composer, is the ultimate challenge.’

The contrast with the music of Antonio Vivaldi could hardly be greater. The chasm in time, approach and aesthetics is so deep that it is perhaps futile to look for deeper relationships. Where Hosokawa pursues an expression of an extra-musical breath, Vivaldi surprises us time and again by playing with the form of the Baroque concerto – and then in more than five hundred compositions! This variety is often inspired by a musical effect, a person or a story, as in La notte, blossoming from Hosokawa’s nocturnal imagery as a melodic and rhythmic mirror, or in La tempesta di mare, prompted by the second intermezzo, Das Meer vor dem Sturm. Sometimes the ‘programme’ is less clear, as in Il gardellino (with written-out birdsong) or in the fourth concerto, which

Schwarzer has called La festa.

Tracklist

Please note that the below previews are loaded as 44.1 kHz / 16 bit.
1.
Singing Garden in Venice - Vorspeil, Nacht
07:02
2.
Concerto op. 10 nr. 2 Largo
01:45
3.
Concerto op. 10 nr. 2 - Fantasmi
01:30
4.
Concerto op. 10 nr. 2 - Presto
01:04
5.
Concerto op. 10 nr. 2 -Largo 'Il Sonno'
02:15
6.
Concerto op. 10 nr. 2 - Allegro
02:27
7.
Singing Garden in Venice - - Il Gardellino
06:47
8.
Concerto op. 10 nr. 3 - Allegro
03:26
9.
Concerto op. 10 nr. 3 - Cantabile
03:03
10.
Concerto op. 10 nr. 3 - Allegro
02:33
11.
Singing Garden in Venice - Das meer vor dem Sturm
08:30
12.
Concerto op. 10 nr. Nr. 1 - Allegro
02:24
13.
Concerto op. 10 nr. Nr. 1 - Largo
02:26
14.
Concerto op. 10 nr. Nr. 1 - Presto
02:25
15.
Singing Garden in Venice - Abenddammerung
07:22
16.
Concerto op. 10 nr. 6 - Allegro
04:18
17.
Concerto op. 10 nr. 6 - Largo
01:45
18.
Concerto op. 10 nr. 6 - Allegro
02:29
19.
Singing Garden in Venice - Nachspiel, Nacht - Schlaf
06:49

Total time: 01:10:20

Additional information

Label

SKU

37615

Qualities

, ,

Channels

, ,

Artists

Composers

,

Genres

,

Cables

van der Hul

Digital Converters

Grimm A/D

Mastering Engineer

Jared Sacks

Mastering Equipment

B&W 803 diamond series

Microphones

Bruel & Kjaer, Schoeps

Mixing Board

Rens Heijnis custom made

Instruments

, , , , , , , , , ,

Original Recording Format

Producer

Jared Sacks

Recording Engineer

Jared Sacks

Recording location

Waalse Church Amsterdam Holland

Recording Software

Merging

Recording Type & Bit Rate

DSD64

Release DateOctober 16, 2015

Press reviews

Stereophile

How to describe music that is so personal, so deeply reflective and rooted in Buddhist contemplation that only listening to the music itself, without distraction, will suffice? Such is the conundrum that, hopefully, will lead you from this page to Channel Classics’ hybrid SACD, Sounds & Clouds: Works by Hosokawa & Vivaldi.
I first learned of the music of Hiroshima-born Toshio Hosokawa (b. 1955) from an overview of his oeuvre in Gramophone. Intrigued, I was delighted to discover that one of the discs recommended in the article—one that is also available as a hi-rez DSD download—had been sitting on my shelves for two years, quietly waiting its turn in a very long queue. How that SACD migrated from the overwhelming number of CD piles in my office to a prominent place in my music room is a mystery that perhaps only a Buddhist master can unravel.

“Silence is perhaps more important than sound in this concept,” writes program note annotator Albert Edelman of Hosokawa’s music. Hosokawa discovered the power of silence when, after an upbringing in a traditional Japanese family, he headed to Germany to study “international” music. Initially drawn to the European avant-garde, he first opened to his own musical heritage after attending a recital of traditional Asian music. Suddenly, he realized that Japanese court music, including Buddhist chants, had for over a millennium explored the “expressive possibilities of new sounds.” Awakening to his past, he returned to Japan for six months to immerse himself in the music of Zen Buddhism.

Hosokawa’s goal was to create new music from traditional forms (and, in the case of this recording, instruments.) Thus does “Vorspiel. Nacht”, the first movement of his Singing Garden in Venice (2011), begin with the little taps and clicks of stones against stones—the very stones one often sees in carefully designed Buddhist meditation gardens. These are the sounds of mystery—the indefinable corollary to the sound of one hand clapping—that begin a work intentionally constructed around the very different sound world of four of Antonio Vivaldi’s early concertos for baroque instruments.

The link between styles, forms, composers, and centuries springs from the commissioner, recorder player Jeremias Schwarzer. In this meet-up with the musicians of Holland Baroque, Schwarzer draws upon his dual immersion in early and contemporary music. With over 70 premiere performances to his credit, he first performed Sounds & Clouds in 2015 and ’16, and recorded it around the same time.

While Hosokawa’s exquisite sounds are as expressive as Vivaldi’s, they represent a very different aesthetic. Vivaldi is more literal in his imitations of nature, and constructs clear rhythmic and harmonic patters. Hosokawa is about something else.

As quotes in Albert Edelman’s liner notes, Hosokawa says, “Early western and Japanese music seek the same tonal qualities, mild and strong, light and dark, and so it was not difficult to take this step [of intertwining Vivaldi with my own music]. What was clear was that I had to go further than mere arrangement, which, by the way, I enjoy doing, for I learn much from original music. I could not touch Vivaldi’s notes, however. And so I entwined elements from his pieces in my prelude, intermezzos and postlude. I dreamed of a spot where the flowers (Vivaldi’s concertos) could blossom at their very finest. My work was that of a gardener, the creation of that musical background, as an exercise in ikebana.”

Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging, was practiced by Hosokawa’s grandfather. As East meets West, the past and present come together in Hosokawa’s music.

Dale Thorn

“Whatever the recording technique, I like it. It’s spacious, yet not distant or overly reverberant. The recorders sound especially alive, with lots of ‘air’ around them.”

Stereophile.com

Somehow, I’d not heard of the Channel Classics Label.

This Album is peacefully stunning, the first 10 seconds going-in sets-up the haunting experience.

This is a “Find”.

Now, I’m hunting the entire Channel Catalog. Thank you, It’s music like this that makes having a nice sound system worthwhile.

Tony in Michigan

ps. They even use AKG 1000 headphones! phew

De Gelderlander 4 out of 5

(…) Een mystieke voedingsbodem van Aziatische signatuur die plek biedt aan vier westerse ‘bloemen’: een kwartet van beroemde fluitconcerten van Antonio Vivaldi.

Luister 9

De overgangen tussen Hosokawa en Vivaldi verlopen vanzelfsprekend, alsof het zo hoort. (…) subtiel en rijk van klank (…)

Magazin.Klassik.com

(…) ein virtuoser Blockflötenspieler (…) kräftig, klar und energiereich begleietet (…)

Music Emotion

(…) de samenwerking met Schwarzer levert een verrassend album op. Het contrast tussen Vivaldi en Hosokawa is groot, maar er is ook spraken van natuurlijke verbondenheid. (…)

Independant.co.uk 4 out of 5

(…) delightful trilling recorder birdsong of “Il Gardellino” deftly and delicately delivered by Schwarzer (…)

Het Parool 5 out of 5

(..) een modelplaat (…) een spel van klankevocatie en stiltes, waarvoor geen andere omschrijving te bedenken is dan toverachtig (…) aangename verwarring (…) Holland Baroque speelt alle stukken buitengewoon beeldend en met zwier. Van harte aanbevolen.

Audiophile Audition

These odd pairings had an excellent chance of going wrong, but the fine performances, the marvelous recording, and the selected music from both composers work well. Recommended for both the music, the artistic conception, and the wonderful recording.

Opus Klassiek

(…) Hosokawa heeft perfecte soundscapes gemaakt die naadloos aansliuten bij de klanken van Vivaldi. (…) Schwartzer is een virtuoos met een bloeiende fantasie (…) een intrigerend genot om naar te luisteren – ieder kiezeltje en elk waterdrupje is te horen.

HRAudio 5 out of 5

(…) the fascinating sounds and textures created by the talented players of Holland Baroque Society are both magical and hypnotic. (…) the fruity bassoon playing of Moni Fischalek deserves special mention. (…) state-of-the-art quality (…)

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