This is my debut album after more than two decades of playing the piano. An inexpressible mix of excitement and trepidation culminated in three exhilarating days of recording: every piece was captured in its entirety, faithfully preserving its narrative and emotions. I have curated the repertoire with unwavering clarity. Much like planning a solo recital, I envisioned the album as a cohesive narrative, weaving together the literary threads of each piece to bring to life a long-cherished dream in my heart.

And my ear seems to glide into the air, Or to have stood stagnated into a flame, inflaming The dormant-active, the low-lying one.

— ZHANG Zao, A Rainy Dream of the King of Chu

During the three days of recording in the concert hall of the National Centre for the Performing Arts, I often found my thoughts drifting to the famous Chinese contemporary poet ZHANG Zao. His verse, I believe, captures like no other the solitude and transcendence of a soul within a grand, resplendent space. The concert hall was filled with thirty-two microphones, each seemingly cradling a "low-lying one", inhabiting the imagined object and fully immersed in the moment. Thus, a fleeting eternity emerged: the world slumbered, the surroundings fell silent, and a solitary figure knelt beneath a magnificent flower on the verge of blooming, exhilarated yet restless.

We set off, step by step, through a boundless stillness where private sentiments ventured alone into the farthest reaches of the wilderness and became one with time.

When curating the repertoire, my instincts unfailingly gravitated towards five works. Though diverse in style and character, they told the same story in different languages. Late one night, the evocative title Waldeinsamkeit ( loosely translated as "solitude of the forest") came to me, irresistible in its allure - it felt like a gift bestowed by these works together.

Waldeinsamkeit is an old German term steeped in fairy tales, forests, Enlightenment philosophy, and religious asceticism, later brought to prominence by 19th-century German literature. It came to embody the solitude of Romantic poets, an idyllic utopia. To me, it symbolizes an inward process of self-discovery - a journey that embraces both tranquility and solitude, yet brims with infinite emotions. It also reflects my pursuit and understanding of German music and literature.

The first piece, Schumann's Waldszenen, marks the beginning of the journey, where, through Schumann's eyes, we gaze upon the romantic German forests - perhaps the Black Forest or the Bavarian Forest. This mid-19th-century work directly evokes dense thickets and deep valleys. Its nine character pieces are intertwined in motives, much like a lush and vibrant forest growing uneasily on a seemingly tranquil yet mysterious land: beautiful and serene, but tinged with gloom and eeriness. The work's spirit and themes are perpetually veiled in metaphor. Thus, its gentle and tranquil atmosphere becomes the perfect disguise: a minstrel-like traveler, using the richness and sensitivity of their inner world, explores the dark, unknown depths of the forest.

After bidding farewell to Schumann's forest, we encounter Liszt's Piano Sonata in B minor, dedicated to Schumann, which could be likened to a journey into the dark forest of the soul. The piece is structured around five main motives, which have been analyzed in countless ways over the years. I define them as follows: Fate (Time), Struggle (Humanity), Mephisto (the Devil), God (the Transcendent), and the Poet (Liszt). Except for the Poet theme, the other four undergo mirror-like transformations across different tonalities and scales, radically altering their meanings and characters. The contradictions and conflicts are rooted in two fate-representing scales introduced at the journey's outset. This narrative approach evokes parallels with Dante's Divine Comedy and Goethe's Faust - both works describe a legendary journey in which a human figure (paralleling the Poet theme in the sonata) witnesses in a saga the divine and the demonic, good and evil, weaving together myriad images and emotions. What draws me to the Piano Sonata in B minor is its seamless fusion of spiritual refinement, physical suffering, and monumental structure into a flow state, shaping a journey of asceticism and pilgrimage. Its massive single-movement structure also symbolizes how the challenges of time and the painstaking attention to detail are mutually reinforcing, demanding ever more devotion and reverence. The journey grows ever more perilous and wondrous the deeper one ventures - much like life itself.

If Liszt's epic is something we " encounter", then Debussy's music can be said to gradually "emerge". His Images leans entirely toward an Eastern spirit. Beginning with Cloches à travers les feuilles, we find ourselves once again in a forest - this time resembling a bamboo grove: blurred light and shadows ripple through the green leaves, interspersed with scattered bells. Then, Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut materializes faintly before us, its choral writing and pentatonic harmonies longing for the moonlight - a vision so distinctly Chinese in imagination! In fact, Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut was dedicated to French sinologist Louis Laloy. The forest journey concludes with the light and nimble Poissons d'or. In contrast to the earlier, philosophically laden pieces, this finale is utterly weightless, without significance or sublimation, simply coming to an end like a goldfish flicking its tail. In its tonally ambiguous colors, all important matters fade into forgetfulness, leaving only a concentrated serenity. As the saying goes, "The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon itself."

Debussy taught me that the German concept of Waldeinsamkeit - symbolizing solitude, longing, and an ascetic quest for the way - transforms in the Eastern context into a carefree freedom. Any exhaustive analysis here would pale next to the simplicity of a verse from SU Shi's Passing the Seven-League Shallows - to the tune of Xingxiangzi:

A skiff sweeping, a crane's startled wings. The skies with the water twinned, as shadows in waves are cleaned. Fishes flashing the mirror, herons the shoal-mist spotting. Along the stream swift in daylight, chilled in morning frost, or crystalline in lunar ring.

Hill upon hill a picture, bend after bend a screen. Back then the hermit, how he deserted years of a view fishing. The emperor-courtier dream, an empty name has been. Only the mountains far with width, dazed with clouds, or early with green.

Finally, two pieces conclude this journey: Bach's Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ (transcribed by Busoni, originally for organ solo) and Scriabin's Piano Sonata No. 4 in F-sharp major. Both works embody a sacred call from the heart, yet they inhabit two vastly different worlds: Bach in the 18th-century St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, and Scriabin at the dawn of early 20th-century mysticism. This is a dialogue spanning nearly two centuries, united by a shared context. Bach's dual-voiced chorale melody longs for divinity, while Scriabin pairs his sonata with a poetic text, yearning to soar across a sea of light into the cosmos, devouring the stars and becoming one himself. Devotion meets madness - this is the bold exploration I wish to undertake: weaving the concept of Waldeinsamkeit through Bach's religious hand into the mystical world and using Scriabin's cosmic language to let out my own solitary cry. The starting point of such mysticism is none other than a state of intoxication. Perhaps a verse from TANG Gong, an obscure Yuan Dynasty poet, aptly captures the essence of this album's reflections and the dream I have long harbored:

How an unwitting drunk is being taken 
Away by stars beneath a boat of dreams.