NAXOS Records on June 10 released “Eight Memories in Watercolor,” a piano album with a total of six pieces composed by Tan Dun and played by Dutch pianist Ralph van Raat.

The six piano solo works are “Eight Memories in Watercolor,” “C-A-G-E- (In Memory of John Cage),” “Film Music Sonata,” “Traces,” “The Fire” and “Blue Orchid,” brimming over with Tan’s expertise in contemporary classical music and his influences from the East and the West.

Naxos said that “Eight Memories in Watercolor” is “deft painterly reflections,” while in “Traces,” Tan “balances sound with silence in this evocation of nature.” The vibrant drama of “Blue Orchid” incorporates the opening motif of Beethoven’s “Diabelli Variations.”

In “Film Music Sonata,” which receives its first recording on general release, Tan draws on his score for the film “The Banquet.” The kaleidoscopic “C-A-G-E-” is a tribute to Tan’s teacher and spiritual compass, John Cage. “The Fire,” written for Van Raat, contains “some of Tan’s most virtuosic and dramatic piano writing,” according to Naxos.

In an interview with Music Weekly, Tan said Van Raat phoned him in the beginning of 2020 when Tan was in his home in Changsha, Hunan Province. “Van Raat said he would spend two years to practice, record and release my piano works,” said Tan.

“I didn’t take for granted but later he really found as many of my piano works as possible and spent 15 months on them. I was moved because he is a professor who has busy concert schedules every year but would use his time during the pandemic to play my piano music,” said Tan.

Born in 1987, Van Raat now teaches at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam in the Netherlands and the Accademia di Musica di Pinerolo in Italy. Many composers, such as John Adams, Louis Andriessen, György Kurtág and Magnus Lindberg, have written works for him and he has recorded more than 30 albums.

Gramophone once commented that Van Raat’s playing “combines powerful projection with a neo-romantic sensibility, focusing on important details while rarely losing sight of the music’s dynamic swell and sweep.”

“Tan Dun’s piano music forms an intimate reflection not only of the broad range and history of his composing but also of the journey of his artistic soul, of his musical and philosophical discoveries and of his personal memories,” said Van Raat.

“Eight Memories in Watercolor” was written in 1978 when Tan left Hunan to study at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. It was his first piano solo work which is subdivided into eight short pieces reflecting his childhood memories in Hunan.

“I was immersed in studying Western classical and modern music but was also homesick. I longed for folksongs and savored the memories of my childhood. Therefore, I wrote my first piano work as a diary of longing,” said Tan in an earlier interview.

Dutch music journalist Joep Stapel commented this piece as a “Ravel-like sound painting, colorful and crystal clear.”

According to Tan, the inspiration for writing “Traces” came from his trip to Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. When he sat on a bus to Dayao Mountain, a wind squeezed in from a window crack which made a sound like pitches: A-C-D and D-C-A. Then the composer used them as the motif for “Traces” to record the wind traces.

“Blue Orchid” was composed in 2020 when Austrian pianist Rudolf Buchbinder invited 12 contemporary composers, including Tan, to write variations on Beethoven’s “Diabelli” theme.

“The Fire” is Tan’s new work, written for Van Raat. “I incorporated Chinese folk music tempi in this piece which reflects a wild beauty, like the fire dance in some Chinese villages,” Tan told Music Weekly.

Tan composed “C-A-G-E- (In Memory of John Cage)” in 1993 after his teacher Cage passed away in 1992. He innovatively used pizzicato on piano and tone colors of the pitches (C-A-G-E) corresponding to Cage’s name to pay homage to the avant-garde master. (Cao Zhen)