Silent Flowers: String Quartets

Toshio Hosokawa's compositions for string quartet reveal a deep connection with traditional Japanese arts. His relationship to sounds is therefore fundamentally Asian, based on the idea of permanent transformation. In these string quartets, there is not a single sound whose character is not continuously modified by glissandos, trills, tremolos, harmonics, vibratos of different sorts, constantly shifting dynamics, and various bowings, by which the individual note is transformed into a dynamic structure. The Arditti Quartet combines innate comprehension of Hosokowa's style with the highest technical skill in these definitive performances.