Pan Hwang-long and contemporary music in Taiwan

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Contemporary music in Taiwan comes into focus as ACL Taiwan plans this year's ACL Festival and Conference in Taipei and Taichung. Foremost is the pioneering work of Taiwanese veteran Pan Hwang-Long.

As ACL Taiwan prepares to host this year's Asian Composers League festival and conference in Taipei and Taichung, there is no better time to explore the music of one of Taiwan's leading senior Taiwanese composers, Pan Hwang-long, who heads the local ACL chapter.

Pan is a two-time winner of the Taiwan National art award. Born in Taiwan in 1945, Pan graduated from National Taiwan Normal University in 1971 with a BA in Music. In 1974 Pan entered the Musikhochschule und Musikakademie in Zurich to study composition with Hans Ulrich Lehmann and theory and counterpoint with Robert Blum.

After graduating in 1976, he studied composition with Helmut Lachenmann at the Staatliche Hochschule fuer Musik und Theater in Hannover and from 1978 to 1982, with Isang Yun at the Universitaet der Kuenste Berlin.

In 1982 he returned to Taiwan and became associate professor at the National Institute of the Arts in Taipei and moved on to positions in various local institutions. He is also active in various music associations in the country. He has also won many awards for his compositions.

Featured on Malaysian Art Radio is one of Pan's most distinctive works for Chinese instruments, as well as two orchestral works.

Dialogue is a series of pieces for a sextet of traditional Chinese instruments that seeks to bridge the art of Chinese instrumental music and modern music. Written for bamboo flute, sheng, pipa, guzheng, huqin and percussion, it was commissioned in 1991 and premiered in Taichung, Kaoshiung and Taipei that year.

Wandlungsphasen II draws on the Taoist philosophy of Yin and Yang and the interdependence and mutual restraint between the elements metal, wood, water, fire and earth.

He employs sonic layers of "tension and relaxation" employs instrumental techniques as well as "shadow casting" and "alienation" to shape the work. The orchestral version of the work was premiered in Taiwan in 2005.

Penglai consists of 12 sections in 3 parts. Part 1 uses melody of tone colours, while Part 2 uses division and combination of layers. Part 3 uses melody and rhythms of tone colours. It is based on a classic poem by Lu Yu, A trip to West mountain village.

It was premiered at the Hilchenbach Festival in Germany in 1979.