This thought-provoking disc is subtitled, “New Piano Music from Taiwan” and as such represents a tempting opportunity to explore a side of the repertoire that will be unknown to many. Certainly, none of the composers here were known to me, and it has been a fascinating journey of acquaintance.
Pianist Chih-Long Hu begins the disc with one of his own works, Three Formosa Caprices (2007). Hu studied at the University of Michigan and the Taipei National University of the Arts, joining the staff of East Tennessee State University in 2006. The title of the first piece, “Heng-Chun,” refers to an old town in south Taiwan and is marked by its delicacy. “921” refers to the Chichi Earthquake that occurred in 1999, killing 2,300 people and destroying over 8,400 buildings. Hu takes a lullaby by Chuan-Sheng Lu, presenting it in clean simplicity before elaborating, adding layers of distanced sadness and finally taking it into extremes of modernism, with clusters and glissandos on the piano strings. Finally, the popular song “Diu Diu Dang Ah” provides the material for a spiky and frolicsome finale.
New York-based Chien-Nien Chen’s Four Formosa Caprices (2007) begins with a “Can Collector’s Fugue” on a theme purportedly taken from the songs of early Taiwanese can collectors (an occupation that formed the basis of their livelihood). The fragmentary introduction gives way to an austere fugue that begins in the style of Bach and generally hovers around it. “Northwest Rainy Blue” is the fantasy-laced, bluesy portrayal of the underwater marriage of a couple of fish; “Funky Bird” takes an originally sorrowful South Taiwanese folk song, “A Chu-Chu Crying Bird,” and disjoints it mercilessly, with more than a hint of satire. Finally, “Goldfish’s Drinking Song,” actually based on a Taiwanese drinking song by Chuan-Sheng Lu, is as accurate a description of tipsiness in music as you are likely to hear. Chen is an imaginative voice that includes a goodly dose of humor.
Ming-Hsiu Yen is still studying for her D.M.A. and has previously studied at Michigan and the Eastman School. Each of her “postcards” (2007) is based on a Taiwanese folk song. First, “Crying Bird,” a sad song that uses the imagery symbolically to refer to the Taiwanese under Japanese oppression. Its use of the minor mode (note, not the pentatonic scale) seems very apposite. Yen’s almost Messiaen-like way with the birdsong elevates her piece to a statement of some depth. “Plowing Song,” surprisingly, includes music of some violence: “No pain, no gain” is the message here.
Yuan-Chen Li was awarded a Jacob Druckman Scholarship and received the Artist Diploma from Yale in 2008. She teaches at Yale’s faculty of music. Hy- (2003) is a four-movement suite written at a time when the composer was fascinated by Hesse’s Siddhartha. The four movements describe water in different conditions. “Tranquil” is spikier than most movements that bear that title, perhaps to describe raindrops. The third movement, like the piece as a whole, is entitled “Hy-,” and plays with shifting viewpoints on tiny cells. The final “Drift” is wonderfully fragmentary. Migoh (2007) is a simple composition based on the interruption of overall chordal movement from dissonance to consonance by a series of scales. Migoh’s effectiveness lies in its very simplicity.
Ching-Mei Lin, currently a doctoral fellow at Michigan University who studies with William Bolcom, provides what might be perhaps described as an “active meditation” on dreams in his Dream Rhapsody of 2007. Composed at a time when Taiwan was once more rejected for United Nations membership, it effectively combines fantasy with an undercurrent of gritty determination. There are passing moments of Rachmaninoff-like Romanticism.
Finally, To an Isolated Island by Ke-Chia Chen. Chen studied at the Curtis Institute and at the Manhattan School of Music, studying with Richard Danielpour. This is the perfect piece to round off the collection, as it effectively acts as a hymn to Taiwan. Its four sections depict differing aspects of Chen’s homeland, including a bustling depiction of city life, the deeply rooted sense of tradition, and hopes for the future. The simplicity of the final measures is most telling.
Chih-Long Hu is a superb proponent of all of this music, and the excellent recording (Sergei Kvitko was both producer and engineer) supports Hu’s efforts perfectly. This is a fascinating release that would be so easy to bypass while browsing in a record store. Do try it. Colin Clarke

Formosa Caprices

$14.99

Add to Cart