Music of the Dark: CHEN Han Piano Recital

"A pianist of dual citizenship in the realms of complexity and lyricism" — Jed Distler, Gramophone (August 2023)

"[He] belongs to that rare breed possessing pianistic dual citizenship: deciphering the thorniest contemporary scores with forensic precision while conquering Romantic warhorses with poet-warrior intensity. In Ligeti's Études, Chen's fingers become fractal calculators resolving polyrhythmic labyrinths, yet paradoxically singing through the mathematical storm with cantabile sorcery. His Empty Strings emerges as an acoustical mirage - those gorgeously calibrated swells and fades achieved through alchemical control of voicing and digital equilibrium. Witness how Fanfares becomes a metallurgical study in staccato/legato dialectics, each articulation a precisely tempered alloy. And in Entrelacs, Chen unfolds the mutating rhythmic topography as if unveiling a sonic parchment through centuries of palimpsests..."

This August marks Chen Han's triumphal return after a five-year metamorphic hiatus, descending upon Shenzhen's Sea World Culture and Arts Center for a classical-contemporary summit. The program - a carefully engineered bridge between spectralist architectures and Romantic cathedrals - promises to demonstrate why this pianist-composer has been hailed as "the Glenn Gould of postmodern virtuosity".