Programme Notes:

Reunion is a large-scale wind-orchestral composition. After quitting from the hostel in the university, the composer missed his old friends in the past so he started to arrange reunions with them. Within 3 months, the composer has joined around 30 reunions with friends, recalling many memories in the old days. As a result, the composer is touched and motivated to compose Reunion.

​

The piece is basically tonal, but the composer abandons the conventional key scheme. Within a piece of 7 minutes, all 12 major keys are employed. Such setting is due to the innate chromesthesia of the composer (aka sound-to-color synesthesia, a neurological condition of hearing sounds and involuntarily evoking an experience of colour), instead of being the compositional purpose. To the composer, Reunion is a colourful painting. The piece begins with a fast section, symbolising the jubilant old times, when the world was once ever so vast and adolescents could freely come and go by. In the middle slow section, the colour representing each musical key portrays the feeling of composer having reunions with friends, including hope, warmth, touch, eagerness, passion, sigh, faith, reminiscence, spirit and longing. The piece is in ABA form. With introduction, elucidation, transition and conclusion, the first theme in middle section is recalled in the coda. At the end, the harmonious brass harmony symbolises the eternal memory.

​

“From the south sky to the north pole,

this airy duet,

by their aging wings,

many a summer and winter logged.”

(From the poem, “The Wild Geese’s Tomb” by Yuan Haowen)

​

Nowadays, reunions with friends are often few and far between, and transient as the faint convergence of diffusing ink. However, reunion can only come by if there has been farewell, so it brings a speechless tug at the heartstrings. To all those who cherish reunions, I dedicate this piece to you.