Various - Xiaoyong Chen: Qian & Yan

Xiaoyong Chen constantly performs a balancing act in his music between his native Beijing and his current home in Hamburg, where he studied with Gy�rgy Ligeti and has been teaching composition and intercultural mediation since 2013. His pieces are thus �west-eastern travel societies�: in addition to the European instruments, several thousand-year-old Chinese sounds can be heard, for example from the mouth organ Sheng, the table harp Zheng, the lute Pipa or the Yangqin (similar to a Western zither). The composer lets the sometimes rugged cultural differences, the seemingly unsuitable sound material and understanding of music come together in a melting pot and produce fascinating new and independent �mixtures� from them, which are always the result of serious work. Will the art of the future be based on tradition? asks Chen. And adds unmoved: 'If so, why?'