Portrait Concert: Tomoya Yokokawa

Performers:
Tomoya Yokokawa, composition
Musicians of the Göttinger Symphonieorchester
Natalia Scholz, violin
Dmitri Feinschmidt, violin
Yair Lantner, viola
Fedor Grigoriev, cello

Programme:
"The scent of autumn breeze" for viola solo (2014)
"Stargaze" for two violins (2015/2025, world premiere), I. Stardust - II. Shooting star
"Intersection" for string quartet (2014/2017)
"legno e crini" for violin solo (2014/2025, world premiere)
"Baby's breath" for three violas (2021), new version for string trio (2026, world premiere)
"Voiceness" for string quartet (2026, world premiere, commissioned by Musik 21 Niedersachsen)

This portrait concert brings together six works for strings by Tomoya Yokokawa, four of them receiving their world premieres. Rather than answering the festival motto "Was sind das für Zeiten?" with an argument, he responds with sound - and in his new string quartet "Voiceness", commissioned by Musik 21 Niedersachsen, he explores why music and composing are indispensable to him.

For Yokokawa, sound is not simply a sequence of notes but a state that emerges from an inner voice - a dialogue between the deepest self and the invisible. He wants to write music that recalls sounds the world may have forgotten. "legno e crini" is a case in point: composed in 2014, it resurfaced as a handwritten manuscript while he was sorting a bookshelf, and it will be heard for the first time at this concert, twelve years after it was written.

The concert is made possible by a grant from Künstlerhof Schreyahn.