‘Quatuor Diotima’

Japan is the focus of the latest two-yearly Ars Musica festival of contemporary music. Consequently, the bill definitely has to include Toshio Hosokawa, perhaps the leading contemporary Japanese composer. No ensemble is more qualified to interpret his work than the Diotima Quartet. Specialising in contemporary music, the French quartet often commissions work from composers such as Rebecca Saunders, Pascal Dusapin, Helmut Lachenmann and Brian Ferneyhough. The quartet regularly works closely with these composers, including Hosokawa himself. In addition to Hosokawa’s Distant Voices, Diotima performs compositions such as the Third String Quartet by Jörg Widmann, an artist on whom BOZAR is turning a spotlight this season as the subject of a portrait.