Toshio Hosokawa - Koto-uta, Voyage I, Saxophone Concerto, Ferne-Landschaft II (2001)

Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa offers a set of pieces that outline his own style of avant-Japonoiserie. There’s wax, there’s wane, ebb, flow, sturm, and drang, but little more, not enough to turn these orchestral washes into pieces. The sonic impulse for each work is clear enough: these are truly compositional (as opposed to purely philosophical) ideas, which the composer fails to develop. And it is always slow–there isn’t a single note of fast music on this disc.