Gao Ping’s music often draws its inspiration from his native home of Sichuan in China, and The Mountain recalls the expressive and humorous melodic inflection of the local dialect. Slow and processional, Questioning the Mountain is a meditation written after the devastating earthquake which struck Sichuan province in 2008. Twelve-Hour Bridge refers to the vast distance between America and China, the structure of the piece symbolising contrasting cultures, while the symbols ‘Mei, Lan, Zhu, Ju’ are plants which stand for the beauty of different traditional Chinese character attributes. Further chamber music by Gao Ping can be found on Naxos 8.557678; his Bright Light and Cloud Shadows on the ‘very enjoyable’ (ClassicsToday.com) Asian Music for String Quartet (8.572488).

The music of the contemporary Chinese composer and pianist Gao Ping, now resident in New Zealand, draws its inspiration from his native folklore, the oral tradition of story-telling familiar from his childhood in Sichuan, and Chinese poetry. The composer himself writes: “I have always thought of myself as a story-teller of sorts, but in place of words I use music.” The second of the Two Soviet Love Songs for Vocalizing Pianist, a hugely entertaining homage to Shostakovich, interweaves the Russian\ folk song Katyusha with fragments of the Scherzo of the Russian composer’s Tenth Symphony and Youman’s Tea for Two.