Piano in Darkness and Light

From Score to Performance, from Auditory to Visual Immersion

Nirvana features piano works by five Chinese and Western composers, spanning various musical periods, including Xu Zhibo's Vibration of the Heavens, Three Études-Tableaux No.1 & 2 by Shao Qing, Qin Yi's Fragmented Cloud, John Cage's In a Landscape and Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. Visual artist Da Yan has taken these works as a starting point and combined light and sound in a unique audience experience. Xu Zhibo, composer of Vibration of the Heavens, describes the concert's concept: "Nirvana is one of a series of 'Piano-Hypermedia Recital' concerts pioneered by the young Chinese pianist Yu Xiangjun, currently based in Germany. Outstanding Chinese and foreign piano music from the modern and contemporary repertoires have been selected for this series. Based on the structural tensions and sonic expressiveness of these musical works, the recital integrates the beauty of piano and the vitality of the media through the prism of contemporary media art, an approach that is both modern and audacious. Presented as 'Modern Music', this is an attempt to construct a performance model based on multi-faceted interpretation and secondary creation."

Taking electronic music as its base, Xu's Vibration of the Heavens is an exploration of the relationship between people and their living space in its three distinct sections: "light", "shadow" and "form". The first two numbers from Three Études-Tableaux, a suite for piano and electronic music by Shao Qing, intends to imitate the brushstrokes of Chinese ink wash painting. Speaking of John Cage's In a Landscape, Da Yan says: "A mesmerising virtual reality experience can be created from good music. This is particularly evident in In a Landscape, a work for piano or harp by American composer John Cage. It gives you a brief escape from reality, and puts you in a state of tranquillity." Young composer Qin Yi dedicated Fragmented Cloud to a group of children with hearing impairments. "Their smiles touched us often during our time together," Qin recalls. "A hearing impairment is not an obstacle to 'listening' to music. Music can have a real emotional pull for them because they hear it from the bottom of their 'hearts'."

Stravinsky Piano Duet for One

The concert culminates in Yu's performance of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, in a "four-hand" arrangement which she plays solo. This feat was achieved in collaboration with Da Yan and sound engineer Fang Dalei. One of the two piano parts she pre-recorded on Steinway's SPIRIO | r high-resolution player piano and it is replayed in concert, serving as the "other half" of a duet. "In a piano duet, the players have to catch the subtle nuances in sound and rhythm, and the rapport between them is put to the test," Yu says. "When playing on my own, however, I have to rely on my inner hearing and musical imagination to accomplish it, to find the place where 'human meets machine'."

Music Beyond the Concert Hall

Nirvana is a form of cross-media dialogue which constructs a multi-faceted and thorough interpretation model for traditional piano music. The concerts in Shanghai have evolved multiple times. For instance, the 2021 version—also known as "Nirvana 3.0"—saw a separate display of the interactive multimedia installation featured in the concert, in addition to all the trappings of the previous performances. The display brings the concert out of the concert hall, helping to explore the possibility of interaction between material, performer and audience in a new virtual space. The same multimedia presentation will be used for the upcoming performance of Nirvana in Hong Kong.

Combined with new media, every last keystroke of Yu's resonates in the core of the human soul, touching the hearts of all who hear them.

Jia Haiting
The article originally appeared in April 2021's Music Lover, it was altered and edited by Hong Kong

From Score to Performance, from Auditory to Visual Immersion

Stravinsky Piano Duet for One

Music Beyond the Concert Hall

The 50th HK Arts Festival

Discover the Sheer Emotional Power of Audio

Piano in Darkness and Light

From Score to Performance, from Auditory to Visual Immersion

Stravinsky Piano Duet for One

Music Beyond the Concert Hall

The 50th HK Arts Festival

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Discover the Sheer Emotional Power of Audio

Acknowledgement