Description

• Composer: Oliver Knussen (1952-2018)
• Format: Full Score
• Instrumentation: Flute, Soprano, Chamber Orchestra
• Work: O Hototogisu! (2017)
• Binding:
• Work Language: English
• ISBN: 9780571541119
• Pages: None

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Description

This exquisite “fragment of a Japonisme”—premiered in 2017 and conceived as a kind of double concerto for soprano, flute, and ensemble of 23 players—O Hototogisu! has proven to be Oliver Knussen’s final work. The eight-minute piece couches seven exquisite haiku settings in richly evocative music, which incorporates signals from Japanese theater (particularly Kabuki). It concerns the Hototogisu (or Lesser Cuckoo), a bird widely invoked in Japanese haiku poetry of the 17th to 19th centuries, in which the poet listens for its arrival from the mountains both as a harbinger of summer and a voice from the land of the dead.