Orchester der Deutschen Oper Berlin

“My ideal music is like the sounds of nature” says Toshio Hosokawa for whom “water, the sea and clouds” provide a central source of inspiration – alongside flowers which are “deeply rooted in Japanese aesthetics and spiritual life”. In “Blossoming II”, Hosokawa aimed to capture the enigma of the lotus flower in music: “Its roots absorb nourishment from the depths of swamps, the stems break new paths through the water to collect sunlight and subsequently produce perfect jewels of flowers. Without the chaos of the muddy depths, the blossoms would never be able to raise their faces to the sky.”

Gustav Mahler’s “Lied von der Erde” is an exceptional composition focused on the transience of human existence based on Hans Bethge’s “Chinesische Flöte”, described by Alma Mahler as “excessively sad poetry”. This collection contained free adaptations of Chinese lyrical poems from the 8th century which according to the author Bethge expressed the “ineffable beauty of the world” and “the eternal sorrow of all that comes into being” in verse. At the end of Mahler’s compositional farewell to life, an “endless melody” underpinned by constantly shifting harmonies climaxes in a state of passionate ecstasy as a musical symbol of the eternal cycle of life and death.