Wang, Ming: Verwandlung

The Zhuangzi, a 2000-year-old Daoist text by the Chinese philosopher ‘Master Zhuang’, is a large collection of anecdotes, allegories and fables, many of them picturesque and of great beauty. Verwandlung (‘Transformation’) is Ming Wang’s musical response to the book’s myriad magical images and their imagined meanings. Employing Western serialist principles in a characteristically ‘exotic’ way to aid musical shaping and structure, she exploits the multifarious sounds of the clarinet and the bass clarinet, notably the full spectrum of overtones, using both conventional and unconventional playing and breathing techniques. The result is a work of singular imaginative power.