Kai-Young Chan: Constraints / Creativity: Cantonese Choral Works
Navona Records

Constraints / Creativity holds the distinction of being the first Cantonese choral album to be released on a classical label, but its value extends far beyond a singular detail. With the release, composer Kai-Young Chan makes good on his advocacy for Cantonese choral music, and in delivering heartfelt renditions the Hong Kong chamber choir Die Konzertisten does its part to honour his beautiful music. In setting texts ranging from ancient Chinese lyric poetry to the World English Bible, Chan has likewise honoured the ancient Cantonese language in writing material that preserves its pronunciation and intonation whilst expressing it in an immensely appealing style. Chan himself clarifies that crafting melodies that align intelligibly with Cantonese text is challenging when the tone language “uses pitch changes to differentiate meanings” and when mismatched melodies can turn a word such as “eternity” into “salamander,” for example. An uplifting arc crystallizes as the ten pieces advance, with feelings of longing and separation gradually replaced by resilience, hope, and determination.

Deftly straddling Eastern and Western worlds, Chan, who acquired his Ph.D. in Music Composition from the University of Pennsylvania and has taught at The Chinese University of Hong Kong since 2016, has seen his works performed by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Mivos Quartet as well as the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. Chan's material is well-served by conductor Felix Yeung, who's also the Music Director of Die Konzertisten, founded in 2008 and today recognized as one of Hong Kong's foremost chamber choirs. Like the composer, it's comfortable inhabiting multiple realms and has been involved in performances of Handel's Israel in Egypt, Vivaldi's Gloria, Mozart's Requiem, Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, and others.

Recorded in June 2024 at Hong Kong's Lee Hysan Concert Hall, Constraints / Creativity augments the choir with piano on eight of the ten pieces—Isaac Lam and Quinton Chu on four apiece—and spotlights vocal soloists on three. As lovely as the performances are in toto, the ones where individual singers step forth are some of the most memorable, simply because the beauty of Chan's melodies resonates even more powerfully when delivered by a soloist. Those aforementioned themes of longing and separation come immediately to the fore when the album begins with “Seeking, Searching,” set to words by Li Ch'ing-Chao and the music exuding desperation and pain as it recounts the grief of a woman searching for her husband. In this nine-minute set-piece, the choir's soaring male and female voices engage in a polychoral pas de deux that at moments plays like sorrow incarnate. That tone carries over into “Withering Blossoms, Fading Scent,” which now supplements the choir's lonely lamentations (“Two hearts apart / One lovesick dream / There's no cure to all this pain”) with Lam's piano. After two doleful settings, the hopefulness of “Night at the Lantern Festival” is welcome, and the impact of Chan's touching evocation is heightened when the choir's Chu-enhanced intonations are followed by a chills-inducing solo turn by Sanders Lau. Elevating the mood further, “Egrets Around the Mountain” celebrates the recuperative potential of nature with polyphonic declamations that suggest tranquility can be achieved during even the most turbulent times.

Set to lyrics by Su Tung-Po, “Life is But a Dream” reinstates the downcast tone of the initial songs with a poet lamenting life's fleeting passage. All is not lost, however: the subsequent “Beneath the Moonlight,” also set to Tung-Po's words, lifts the spirits when the poet, despite being far from his family, takes comfort in knowing they “can still share the full moon.” With Chu accompanying the choir's delicate rendering of Wen Yi-Tuo's words, tenderness pervades “Maybe You've Grown Weary of Weeping” when a deceased young girl is memorialized (“Maybe, this music you hear is more beautiful / Than the quarrels and curses of man's world”). In keeping with the wedding-staple text from “1 Corinthians 13: 4–8,” “Love Never Fails” emphasizes love's enduring power through a harmonious musical expression. Even prettier is Chan's treatment of the as-familiar words from “Psalm 23” that remind us that even in the darkest moments hope and goodness remain as restoratives to the soul.

January 2025