Hosokawa - The Raven

The Guardian 60

Hellekant/United Instruments of Lucilin/Kawase
(Naxos)

Toshio Hosokawa’s 2012 setting of Edgar Allen Poe’s famous poem is categorised as a monodrama. But the composer made connections between Japanese Noh plays, because of the “unanthropocentric” viewpoint of the text with its talking bird, and ambiguities between dream and reality. It was very much designed as a vehicle for the Swedish mezzo Charlotte Hellekant, and makes as much use of her spoken acting abilities as it does of her singing. Much of the text is delivered as melodrama over suitably doomy, atmospheric textures from the 12-piece ensemble, so that beginning the disc with Hellekant’s slightly arch reading of the original poem seems rather unnecessary.

In the sections that Hosokawa does assign to the singing voice, it’s still hard to escape the incessant rhyming couplets of the original, even at the climax, when the music finally achieves a kind of operatic intensity. Hellekant delivers it all superbly, though; without a performer of her dramatic presence, it wouldn’t be half as convincing as it is.