"...This album reveals [Wang Lu's] strong personality and vivacious spirit, supported by very solid technique. It also reflects the young pianist and composer’s various sources of inspiration.
The disc opens with urban ambiances: Urban Inventory (2015), for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano, consists of five snapshots in which street recordings (pop songs, words, laughter, a most likely patriotic female chorus) are intermingled with airy, clear and colorful instrumental writing, energetically rendered by New York’s Third Sound Ensemble. The third piece, Gifts of Gab, divulges Wang Lu’s particular interest in the tonalities of the spoken voice, confirmed in Cross-Around (2010) and especially in Past Beyond (2012), in which a phoneme-free arc encounters the rawness of a brass- and cymbal-rich orchestration, clearly yet peripherally evoking Tibetan rituals. The astringency of this episode is well-suited to the Ensemble Intercontemporain.
The cries in Wailing (2009) echo childhood memories—a Chinese village in which young peasants alternately weep and, at weddings and funerals, play poorly tuned brass and folk instruments and percussion. Here, the melodic contour of an a priori non-musical sound is key, but also leans on the improvised jazz sounds of clarinet glissandi.
The subject of Cloud Intimacy (2016)—a virtual existence on social networks, an oversaturation of images and messages—could have yielded an anecdotal piece. Instead, Wang Lu pitches the International Contemporary Ensemble an ideal scenario in which to exercise its responsiveness. Frenzy, permanent switches, jingles and the invasion of notification tones build up an extremely coherent and controlled narrative. This is a particularly exhilarating anthology of scores and collaborative ensembles."