Lei Liang: Dui
Islandia Music Records

Issued on Maya Beiser's Islandia Music imprint, Dui is a both a splendid portrait of Chinese-born American composer Lei Liang (b. 1972) and a strong addition to the cellist's forward-thinking label. Five works are presented, one of which features a solo performance by Beiser that's worth the price of admission alone. The others, however, are no less worthy of attention, with duets by pipa player Wu Man and percussionist Steven Schick and violinist Cho-Liang Lin and percussionist Zhe Lin followed by solo contrabass and ensemble settings performed by Mark Dresser and loadbang (trumpeter Andy Kozar, trombonist William Lang, bass clarinetist Carlos Cordeiro, and baritone Jeffrey Gavett), respectively. At seventy-three minutes, Dui provides a generous sampling of Liang's compositional output since 2016.

He's received many an award and accolade for his work. Xiaoxiang, his concerto for saxophone and orchestra, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2015, and his orchestral setting, A Thousand Mountains, A Million Streams, was awarded the 2021 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. He's created more than 100 compositions, published more than fifty articles, and had a hand in editing eight publications. Currently the Chancellor's Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of California in San Diego, Liang is a graduate of New England Conservatory of Music and Harvard University whose music has appeared on Naxos, New World, BMOP/sound, Albany, and Bridge Records. The works on Dui aren't just formal compositional exercises but instead vehicles for personal reflections on his cultural and spiritual heritage. While Liang isn't a performer on the release, he speaks through the musicians who themselves impose their indelible stamps on the material. These pieces are very much portraits of Liang, but his partners make them collaborations in the truest sense.

The springboard for vis-à-vis (2018) is the pipa player's exuberant opening utterance, which invites equally florid replies from the percussionist. Created by Liang for Man and Schick, vis-à-vis proves to be a terrific outlet for their energies and imaginations. Conversational by design, the piece patiently unfolds as a series of exchanges, some aggressive and others contemplative. If Man is the primary melodic driver of the piece, Schick is its main colourist, with a huge arsenal of cymbals, drums, and mallet instruments used in the mesmerizing performance. That said, Man also draws from the pipa a dazzling range of sonorities and effects. A similar strategy is deployed by violinist Cho-Liang Lin and percussionist Zhe Lin for their rendering of déjà vu (2019), which the composer describes as “a sonic refraction of vis-à-vis through the lens of violin and percussion, along with their contrasting characteristics and cultural associations.” Again a number of different percussion instruments (some different than ones used by Schick) are called upon for this extended dialogue with the violin, and the Lins distinguish themselves as powerfully in their realization as Man and Schick do in theirs.

Comprising six song sections and commissioned by cellist Erica Wise, Mongolian Suite (2022) conveys the melancholy the Mongols experienced when far from home. Beiser uses her remarkable technique to give resonant voice to the warriors' feelings of loss and their longing for home, friends, and family. The cellist shows herself to be a superb conduit for Liang's aching expression when her haunting utterances and sensitive phrasing capture the dignified character of a heartfelt cry (hear, also, how strikingly her cello resembles an erhu during the upper-register passages in “Mother and Daughter” and “Feng”). The piece isn't without a lighter moment, as shown by its infectious “Yin Shan Dance” movement, but its most affecting moments are the melancholic ones.

Performed by Dresser (who Liang calls his “musical hero”), Luminosity (2016) offers a fascinating study in the possibilities the contrabass offers as a generator of sound and texture when someone as innovative as Dresser's involved. A case in point, after passages of creaking, groaning, shrieking, wheezing, and wailing, the performance ends with a threading technique invented by him that involves removing hairs from the bow and reattaching them from underneath the strings; that in turn enables the player to bow multiple strings simultaneously. Otherwise, Dresser's incorporation of harmonics, glissando, multi-phonics, bowing variations, and pizzicato makes for an always-gripping eighteen minutes; during one episode, the contrabass could even pass for a harmonica.

May 2025