Album: Toshio Hosokawal, Landscapes (ECM New Series)

Toshio Hosokawa's work involves dialogues between East and West, and ancient and modern – here represented in the form of the Japanese bamboo mouth organ, the shô, and the orchestra, respectively.

Played by Mayumi Miyata, the shô has a gentle, evanescent character whose glistening, high-register drone is emulated in pieces such as "Landscape V" and "Cloud and Light" by the strings of the Münchener Kammerorchester: in the latter work, the addition of restrained metallic percussion and brass provides islands of rootedness among the airy languor, whose weightless, immutable presence recalls the drift-music of such as Morton Feldman and Pauline Oliveiros. Exquisite.

DOWNLOAD THIS: Cloud and Light; Sakura; Landscape V