The Berlin-based Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa conceives of music as ‘a calligraphy of space and time’ and regards the flute as the instrument that can most deeply realise his musical ideas, the performer’s breath embodying the living power of sound enhanced by the equally expressive silence which surrounds it. The accomplished Icelandic flautist Kolbeinn Bjarnason, who has also studied shakuhachi music, conveys the essence of Hosokawa’s ‘musical calligraphy’, shaping sound and silence into deeply spiritual soundscapes for solo flute and within haunting instrumental textures.

Includes work(s) by Brian Ferneyhough.