PIANO CONCERTO “Cube”（2020）

Having provisionally completed work on my piano concerto “Cube” in 2018，the unprecedented Covid pandemic and its social repercussions provided me with the opportunity to redirect my attention once again to this work，which I brought to definitive completion in 2020. I replaced the third movement ‘Xfade’ in the first draft with a ‘Capriccio’，and I revised the fifth movement ‘Finale’ to become ‘Cube’，with the consequence that all five movements gained titles beginning with the letter C，reflecting the fact that the work had been completed during the Covid pandemic.
The word ‘cube’ that appears in the work’s title originates in two concepts. The first is that of ‘virtual physical space’，a concept resorted to by a French critic in an evaluation of several of my works. Although this is an imaginary phenomenon that could never occur in reality，I attempted to depict in sound the idea of a cube floating in space，moving slowly and rotating while undergoing radical changes in angle. The other reference is to Cubism，which is of course the conceptual basis of the work of Picasso，referring specifically to a method of painting that involves representing an object seen from various angles in a single picture surface. Passages that superficially appear to be out of context are suddenly inserted as the music moves forward. What I have tried to do is to take a fresh look at the idea of musical unity and consistency from a standpoint that differs from the traditional dialectical method employed in classical music.
The title of each movement directly expresses the musical content. The first movement is entitled ‘Cascade’ because of the descending figures in the piano suggesting a waterfall that appear at the start. The second movement，‘Chorale’，is so named to reflect the theme played at the opening of the movement by the woodwinds. The third movement，‘Capriccio’，is in effect a scherzo in the sense that it is a playful attempt to represent symmetrical figurations in music. Following the extended ‘Cadenza’ of the fourth movement，the work’s fifth and final movement is ‘Cube’，featuring organic interplay between piano and orchestra.