Where East Meets West:
Contemporary Chinese Piano Music for the Studio & Concert Stage

During the past three decades, the West has increasingly discovered the enormous variety of music that permeates Chinese culture.  While we are aware of the highly talented pool of piano performers from China, composers of Chinese art music who have incorporated Western musical idioms in their piano works have remained largely unknown.

China’s first contact with Western keyboard music dates back to 1601, with a performance on a spinet by a visiting Jesuit priest; however, it was not until the twentieth century that exiled Russian and Jewish musicians began to actually teach Western music to the Chinese.  By the 1940s, the piano became a highly prized possession of the upper class.  It was during this time that Chinese composers began to incorporate Western musical language in their pedagogical and concert piano works.  Today, thanks to performers such as Lang Lang, the beauty of this important body of repertoire has reached a global audience.

This lecture-recital will focus on concert and pedagogical works where composers have skillfully blended the interesting timbres, improvisatory elements and tunings of Chinese folk music with the more traditional aspects of Western concert music. View presentation outline.

Works performed in their entirety or in excerpts:
Staccato Beans (#2) from Eight Memories in Watercolor by Tan Dun
Thunder Drum by Li-Ly Chang
Island Watch by Li-Ly Chang
Shepherd’s Joy by Lao Chih-Cheng
Silver Clouds Chasing The Moon by Wang Jian Zhong
Eight Memories in Watercolor by Tan Dun
Dew-Fall-Drops by Tan Dun
Guessing by Chen Yi
Ba Ban by Chen Yi