Newcomer Award George Xiaoyuan Fu

Mirrors

Works by Ravel, Unsuk Chin, Rachmaninov, Freya Waley-cohen et al

George Xiaoyuan Fu (piano)

Platoon PLAT15459 ‘Ravel is one of my favourite composers, and Miroirs has so many interesting figurations and textures – I could practise it for hours!’ enthuses George Xiaoyuan Fu (above). His winning album Mirrors isn’t a straightforward performance of Ravel’s homage to the French avantgarde, however. Instead, it presents musical reflections – later works by composers ranging from Rachmaninov to Freya Waley-cohen and Unsuk Chin – interspersed with the suite’s movements.

‘I'm interested in the transition from Romanticism to the modern day,' he says. 'People don’t tend to think there’s much in common between impressionism and contemporary music. But when you talk to composers, that repertoire is part of their cultural reference and they're inspired by it. Why not play on those links?’

The reflections are double sided, and the contemporary pieces also pave the way to a greater understanding of Ravel. ‘The more I work with living composers, and understand how they think, the better I’m able to understand how past composers might have thought,’ says Fu. ‘Ravel was an experimental composer.

His works sounds very tonal to us now, but if you read the reviews of his time, you realise that audiences had a lot of difficulty with his music. Juxtaposing adventurous contemporary works with Miroirs contextualises that challenge and helps the audience to embrace how he sounded at the time.’ Charlotte Smith