"Shuixiu" - "Manches Fluides" is a quintet for piano and string quartet I composed in 2018-19 for the 11th Festival Loop 2019 of Contemporary Music in Brussels for the "Mendelssohn Ensemble". This piece was commissioned by Mr. Lorenzo Carola, President of the "Composers Forum" of the Association of Belgian Composers.
The "Dance of Fluid Sleeves" is a typical traditional Chinese dance dating from the Han Dynasty (206 BC to 220 AD) and the Tang Dynasty (618 to 907). Thanks to the fluid movements of the sleeves and their extensions, this dance offers to the public a beautiful physical and visual sensation. The magical movements of the dancers, throwing and dancing with their extremely long sleeves, make the dance as fluid as a moving cloud or the flow of a waterfall. They express joy, sorrow and the spirit of subtle emotional expression, while making the stage effect very aesthetic.
The idea of my composition is polyphonic thinking on several levels: 1) from a musical point of view, I imagined the dancing movements of fluid sleeves in the air and through the flow of time, wondering how to musically transcribe this beauty and its auditory tension. 2) from an emotional point of view, I wanted to commemorate the death of the three-year-old Syrian boy, Alan Kurdî, in the Mediterranean on September 2, 2015, in an attempt to show my love for human peace and hatred of war.
Piano et quatuor à cordes