A long sustained note, passing imperceptibly to the horn around 1'20", and surrounded by distant percussion, puts us firmly in the sound world of Japanese music, full of direct allusions to the natural world – especially wind and water – and strongly scented by musical images of lotus blossom. Stefan Dohr, for whom Toshio Hosokawa composed his Horn Concerto Moment of Blossoming in 2010, is clearly at one with the composer’s vision of the lotus flower’s growth as an allegory for mankind’s passage through life, and as the pitches widen out and the surrounding textures become more complex, his strongly focused presence, depicting the flower’s growth from roots deep underwater to bursting out, to quote Hosokawa’s booklet-note, into ‘beautiful jewel-like blossoms’, is utterly compelling. Less so is the playing of the RSNO under Jun Märkl. While the orchestra effortlessly brush aside the score’s huge technical challenges, only occasionally (as in a magical moment around 15'45") does Märkl successfully evoke the weightless mysticism of Hosokawa’s writing.

A cello concerto in all but name, Chant is inspired by the ceremonial music of Japanese Buddhism. A complex and musically demanding score, Anssi Karttunen is thoroughly attuned to Hosokawa’s musical vision, although again I am not entirely sure that Märkl is quite so sympathetic to the idiom, and the orchestral support is, at times, solidly earthbound.

The third of these 20-minute, single-movement concertos is by far and away the most successful, helped enormously by Japanese pianist Momo Kodama, for whom Hosokawa wrote his piano concerto Lotus Under the Moonlight in 2006. She holds us in thrall throughout; and while the music is again inspired again by the lotus flower, distant allusions to the slow movement of Mozart’s 23rd Piano Concerto give it a more clearly defined outline, to which Märkl responds unreservedly, drawing magically delicate colours and rich textural intricacies from what is a profoundly attractive score.