Guo Wenjing - Listen to the Mountain: The Music of Guo Wenjing (2006)

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Guo Wenjing - Listen to the Mountain: The Music of Guo Wenjing (2006)

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Guo Wenjing (郭文景) was born in 1956 in Chongqing, an ancient city of China’s mountainous Sichuan province. In 1978, Guo was one of a hundred students admitted out of 17,000 applicants to Beijing’s re-opened Central Conservatory of Music. Unlike many colleagues from this acclaimed class (Tan Dun, Chen Yi, Zhou Long), Guo remained in China after graduation.

Guo's music first became known in the West in 1983, when Suspended Ancient Coffins on the Cliffs on Sichuan was premiered in Berkeley, California. The piece clearly pays tribute to Bartók, highlighting two solo pianos with a battery of percussion instruments, but the strong imprint of Guo’s own Sichuanese roots is unmistakable in the orchestral writing. Shu Dao Nan [Hard are the ways of Sichuan] (1987), a symphonic poem with voices, is a setting of Li Bai’s poetry, which the official People’s Music Publishing House selected as part of its series “Twentieth-Century Distinguished Chinese Classics”. Chou Kong Shan [Sorrowful, Desolate Mountain] (1992, rev. 1995), a concerto for Chinese bamboo flute, was premiered by the Göteborg Symphony Orchestra in Sweden under the baton of Neeme Järvi. Guo’s other orchestral works include concertos for violin, cello, and harp.

Apart from his chamber music for traditional western string quartets and percussion ensembles, Guo also has
composed Late Spring (1995) for Chinese ensemble and Sound from Tibet (2001) combining instruments from China and the West. Among his most performed chamber works are Drama (1995, a trio for three percussionists who also speak and sing), Inscriptions on Bone (1996, for alto singer and 15 instruments),
She Huo (1991, for eleven players) and Parade (2004, a sequel to Drama, for three percussionists).
Guo has also composed music scores for 20 feature films and 25 television films in China.

At home, Guo has been honored among the Top 100 Living Artists of China. Abroad, his works have been featured at festivals in Amsterdam, Berlin, Glasgow, Paris, Edinburgh, New York, Aspen, London, Turin, Perth, Huddersfield,
Hong Kong and Warsaw, and at venues like Frankfurt Opera, the Berlin Konzerthaus, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and New York’s Lincoln Center. He has written works for internationally distinguished ensembles like the Nieuw Ensemble, Atlas Ensemble, Cincinnati Percussion Group, Kronos Quartet, Arditti String Quartet, Ensemble Modern,
Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, Göteborg Symphony Orchestra, China Philharmonic Orchestra, Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra, and Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.