[Piano Solo]
Yidi Jiao DMA Recital, October 1, 2023
Simone Cimino, June 1, 2023, “Citta di Barletta” concert series
Rebecca Stager, Cascadia Composer “Visions and Voyages”, May 6, 2023

Program Notes:

Two Memories in Shanghai is a piece portraying the Shanghai of the composer's impressions. There are two movements in total: 

I. Rainy Day
II. Gardenia

The first movement is a tribute to the composer Toru Takemitsu. This movement also depicts the "yellow plum day" after rain, which is weather unique to Shanghai. Some of the rhythmic elements in the motif are influenced by folk songs among the local Shanghai people. The second movement extracts one of Shanghai's most famous flowers, the gardenia. The composer uses a pantonal approach to portray the vague feeling of gardenias in his childhood. 

Both movements use a more contemporary musical technique that portrays the hometown of the composer in a different way, giving the listener a sense of “hazy beauty”. Although both movements contain artificial scales and chords, the connection between each musical phrase is very clear. The composer wanted to create a contrast between the clear motivic development and the sense of harmonic ambiguity.