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CD
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NA 134CD
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"These three pieces deliver in the clearest manner the extraordinary compositional voice of Ge Gan-ru (b.1954) . His life journey is now a somewhat familiar story of the generation of Chinese artists in the late twentieth century... of a childhood in music, of being sent to forced labor camp as a teenager, of being a professor under the communist regime, of getting away to New York and establishing a life there. The earliest piece presented, 'Yi Feng' (Lost Style) was written for his student, Frank Su Huang, in Shanghai in 1983. Its premiere caused a scandal and was denounced. Even today, 25 years later, the raw power and terrifyingly deep explosions in sound of the cello tuned in fourths down an octave, evoke an avant-garde in response to a world of imposed order. 'Wrong, Wrong, Wrong!' was written in 2006 for Gan-ru's friend and collaborator, Margaret Leng Tan. It is a Peking Opera-style voice setting for a poem from 1155 in which the woman (who was wronged) leaves nothing left behind in expressing her anguish. This melodrama is crooned, screamed, uttered, cajoled, hummed, whispered, wept and sung by the inimitable Ms. Tan, who also accompanies her self with an ensemble of toy instruments that can be found in most Chinatowns. 'Four Studies for Peking Opera' (2003) is a serious and recognizably traditional essay in the canon of piano and quartet literature. It is in four movements -- Prologue, Aria, Narrative, and Clown Music. The piano serves primarily as an incarnation of the percussion section for the Peking Opera, and is variously prepared to render gongs, cymbals, wood blocks, zithers and so on."
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