With Mist Without, recently signed pianist and poet Xiaofu Ju presents his debut album for DG China. This concept-driven recital transforms a single image into a richly imagined listening journey, introducing a distinctive artistic voice of a new generation. 

Inspired by the German notion of Weltschmerz (pain of the world) and the spirit of Chinese Misty Poetry, the album reveals its emotional world through suggestion rather than direct expression. Meaning emerges gradually, like shapes appearing through mist, as music, text, and poetry come together to create a unified artistic experience. 

More than a collection of masterpieces, Mist Without is conceived as a complete one-sitting experience — an immersive world that moves through mist, night, ghosts, mourning, and darkness before arriving at a moment of lucid stillness. The music comes to an end, yet the mist remains.  

The album is released digitally, on CD and on vinyl.









Chinese Misty Poetry has had a profound influence on my work. In such poetry, reality is not a direct object of statement but rather an atmosphere that lingers around language. Meaning is never explicitly articulated; instead, it slowly emerges between images. This manner of writing is inseparable from the historical circumstances and collective memory experienced by the Misty Poets - who wrote between personal suffering and idealistic pursuit, seeking possibilities of expression between reality and imagination. It is against this backdrop that “mistiness” became a necessary poetic strategy: not a departure from reality, but a way for reality to manifest otherwise.

In conceiving this album, I was instinctively drawn to the German compound word “Weltschmerz” - literally “world-pain”: the sadness, weariness, or melancholy one feels in the face of the world’s evil and suffering. Often associated with Romantic-era poets who expressed disillusionment with a reality that never met their idealised expectations, “Weltschmerz” is essentially a deep sadness or sense of disappointment with the state of the world. It underpins the philosophy of Schopenhauer, the poetry of Heine, the novels of Camus, and Thomas Mann used the term to articulate a sober, persistent state of consciousness.

Yet when I tried to situate this word within a Chinese context, I found that the literal translation - “世界之痛” (world-pain) - could not begin to capture what I wished to express through music. At the end of language, music begins; but before that, I needed a poetic concept as a path.

Zhang Zao, a leading figure of the Misty Poetry movement who lived in Germany for over two decades, once proposed the literary ideal of “assimilating the antiquity to connect with Europe”: absorbing the spiritual structures of classical Chinese poetry while entering into dialogue with European poetics. In his poems, language retains the concision of classical lyricism while constantly opening itself to the outside world, allowing personal experience to intersect with broader cultural contexts. I cannot help but wonder: when faced with such a liminal predicament, can “Misty Poetry” offer another way of resolving reality?

First, “Weltschmerz” is not merely personal experience but a mechanism of collective melancholy and empathy, whose spiritual significance unexpectedly converges with the collective condition of the Misty Poets. At the same time, in the context of classical Chinese literature, “朦胧” (mistiness) has always been a synonym for “雾” (fog). And so the Chinese phrase “身外之物” (things outside the body) came to mind, which then “mistified” into “身外之雾” (mist outside the body - or, mist without). “身外”(outside the body) corresponds to “Welt” in the original word, denoting the external world of reality - which brings to mind Lacan’s “objet petit a”, an un-symbolisable absence. “雾”(mist/fog) is a state of perception: both an awareness of the complex tangles within one’s mind and a resigned summation of an indifferent reality. It is worth noting that the German translation of Misty Poetry also uses the word “fog”: Nebeldichtung.

Thus “Weltschmerz” and “Mist Outside the Body”(or Mist Without) enter into a deep resonance: the former describes an existential melancholy felt by human beings in the face of the world, while the latter offers a possible linguistic form for that experience. The world exists both outside the subject and with an impenetrable distance, as if through a layer of “mist outside the body”.

This particular translation also becomes the prelude to the album’s narrative. From the homophonic shift of “物” (thing) to “雾” (mist), the weight of reality gradually transforms in language into an image tinged with “物哀” (mono no aware). And from “mist”, the music naturally moves to Leoš Janáček’s In the Mists.



Janáček - In the Mists; Piano Sonata 1.X.1905
Janáček’s In the Mists is a work permeated by the pain of losing a daughter. In this music, ‘mist’ is not merely an image but a temporal experience. Melodies often dissipate before they can fully unfold, then reappear in slightly deformed shapes, as if memories are surfacing repeatedly at the edges of consciousness. The music thus assumes a perpetually wavering state: motifs are constantly interrupted, diverted, or restarted, as when walking in fog - glimpsing a contour only to have it swallowed up again.

This unstable temporal structure is closely bound to Janáček’s unique musical language. Having long studied the speech rhythms of Czech dialects, he refined their subtle intonations into musical motifs. Many melodic fragments thus take on speech-like qualities: brief, fractured, yet intensely charged.

Following In the Mists comes Janáček’s Piano Sonata 1.X.1905, written after a political clash in Brno in which a young worker was killed during a demonstration. Janáček originally wrote three movements, but later destroyed the last, leaving only “Presentiment” and “Death”.

In this sonata, Janáček writes a persistent unease into the very texture of the music. Many melodic motifs are interrupted or diverted just as they take shape, as if anticipating an event not yet occurred. Harmonic collisions intensify, creating an irresolvable tension - like palpitations from an ominous foreboding. Within this tension, the emotion is no longer merely sadness but gradually takes on a sonic quality close to “desolation”.

The second movement, “Death”, slowly transforms this tension into a process of exhaustion. After extreme agitation, the music’s pulse weakens like a failing heart: the tempo slows, the sound thins, as if life’s rhythm is ceasing bit by bit. When the music finally falls into stillness, it is not a true ending but a forced silence.



Ravel - Gaspard de la Nuit
If Janáček’s sonata ends in the silence of “Death”, what follows is another mode of being: the ghost. In many literary traditions, the ghost is both an echo of death and a residual trace of memory in the world. It is along this thread of imagery that the music enters Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit.

Based on Aloysius Bertrand’s prose poems, Gaspard de la Nuit builds a nocturnal world of phantoms and unease on the piano. For me, the structure of Gaspard de la Nuit is like a labyrinth: performer and listener alike step into a dark space, moving through ever-shifting sonorities and images. In a sense, this journey is like Theseus entering the Cretan labyrinth - each step an exploration and a trial of the self.

In Ondine, the night first appears as an intensely humanised sonic space. Flowing arpeggios are like flickering light on water, while the melody carries the weight of an imploring voice. Though often understood as seductive fantasy, in my experience of playing it, it sounds more like an entreaty - as if some being is trying to cross between worlds and speak to the human.

In stark contrast stands Le Gibet. The persistent B-flat, like a distant bell tolling slowly, plunges time into irreversible stasis. This world no longer belongs to human experience but exhibits a cold objectivity - approaching what Lacan calls “le Réel”: a stratum no longer appeased by structures of meaning. Yet in this inhuman stillness, Ravel suddenly writes a fleeting phrase of human compassion. In that flash, the human voice sounds infinitely precious.

In the final movement, Scarbo, the heart of the labyrinth reveals itself. Extreme speed and constantly shifting layers of sound generate an almost frenzied energy. In a sense, this movement is not only a technical limit but also a trial of humanity. On this threshold, fear ceases to be merely negative emotion and becomes a force that pushes the spirit beyond its own limits - a remedy that forces consciousness across its own threshold.



Mozart - Lacrimosa
After such a trial, one must finally confront one’s own fragility and limits. Meanwhile, the ghosts that wandered through the nocturnal labyrinth find brief solace in a requiem. It is at this moment that the Lacrimosa from Mozart’s Requiem appears.

Within the Requiem, the Lacrimosa is often heard as a collective lament: the melody unfolds in rising and falling phrases, like an irrepressible sigh. Compared to the preceding music, the emotion here is no longer the fear or unease of the labyrinth, but a more direct, more human sadness. It no longer belongs to any single individual but to an emotion everyone can understand - “Weltschmerz” appears.

In my solo piano arrangement, this lament is re-placed in a more solitary sonic space. Without the grand sonorities of choir and orchestra, the melody becomes a distant echo: retaining its original collectivity while taking on a more intimate expression. The piano seems both to repeat that ancient lament and to respond alone.



Dowland - In Darkness Let Me Dwell
After this shared lament, the music turns to another, more inward space: John Dowland’s In Darkness Let Me Dwell. If Mozart’s Lacrimosa still belongs to common human grief, then here the emotion becomes more solitary and extreme. The title itself already suggests a posture: darkness is no longer merely a fate that befalls one, but a chosen dwelling place.

Yet in this extreme emotion, the music itself remains remarkably sober in colour. Thanks to the restraint and transparency of Renaissance musical language, melody and harmony avoid dramatic conflict, unfolding slowly within a spare texture. The deeper the emotion, the quieter and more controlled the music appears.

In my piano arrangement, the song’s ending is deliberately left unresolved. The final reprise of the theme in the original does not truly resolve but lingers on a harmonic suspension. At this moment, I add a new upper voice: a direct quotation of the right-hand figuration from the second half of the first movement of Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No. 4. As the melody gradually rises, this accompanying voice seems to climb higher on the keyboard, finally vanishing with the unresolved harmony into the high register, as if suddenly sucked away by an invisible force.

This unresolved ending also forms a hidden connection to the next work. The last note of Dowland’s melody is G-sharp - a tension note in the E dominant seventh chord that never finds true belonging. What follows is the first note of Scriabin’s White Mass: a high A. In harmonic terms, this moment completes a conventional 5-1 resolution: E dominant seventh moves naturally to A. But that A is not drawn into the A minor implied by Dowland; instead, it is immediately pulled into Scriabin’s fiercely tensile harmonic world. In that instant, two entirely different musical languages penetrate each other.

This connection also implies another structural resonance. The figuration quoted from Scriabin in the Dowland arrangement comes from his Fourth Sonata, while the work that follows later in the album is his Seventh Sonata. From Fourth to Seventh spans a rising fourth. In Scriabin’s musical language, such ascending motion is often linked to an energy of flight and ascent. And so the unresolved darkness in Dowland is suddenly redirected in another direction - as if, deep within the darkness, the coming lightning has already begun to glimmer.



Scriabin - Piano Sonata No. 7 (White Mass)
After such dark meditation, the music finally arrives at Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No. 7(White Mass). If the journey until now has wandered through mist, night, and darkness, here a higher-energy spirit suddenly appears.

Scriabin regarded this work as a kind of musical ritual of exorcism. But this exorcism does not come from violence - rather, from a continuously ascending spiritual force. Through accumulating harmonies and rapidly shifting sonorities, the music seems to build energy until, at the coda, it breaks through its own limits.

From the perspective of Scriabin’s creative logic, this emergence of energy is not an isolated moment but the result of a long growth. His music is an organism: themes, motifs, and harmonies are not assembled but grow out of one another through constant evolution. Certain musical images even span different works, slowly changing over time, like a continuously developing consciousness.

The central harmonic image in the White Mass - that sound that seems to fuse major and minor modes - can be traced back to the Piano Sonata No. 5. In that work, major and minor harmonies interwove in a dance-like manner; by the Seventh Sonata, these previously separate sounds seem to have continued growing through time and finally fused together.

A similar growth appears in the melodic motifs of the White Mass. The leaping high notes of the first theme vaguely trace the contour of the second half of the first theme from the symphonic poem Prometheus. Across different works, the musical consciousness continues to extend itself. In this sense, Scriabin’s musical world is not merely a collection of independent pieces but a continuously growing whole. Merleau-Ponty’s concept of “the flesh of the world” (la chair du monde) - describing the intertwined, chiasmic, and indivisible structure between subject and world - offers a parallel: Scriabin’s music, too, seems less a succession than a single living body unfolding.

It is within this growth that the explosive ending of the White Mass acquires its true meaning.

In such a mystical world, the mist, the desolation, the entreaty, the stillness, the fear, the lament, and the darkness all seem to resurface. The White Mass cannot truly dispel the “Weltschmerz” invoked at the outset.

It is more a spiritual gesture: after seeing the world clearly, an attempt to retain a certain spiritual force. But the world itself does not change. It still presents what Heidegger called “Weltlosigkeit” - worldlessness: an existence indifferent and unappeased by human meaning.

In today’s world, such an inhuman work feels especially important.

The music stops. The mist does not lift.

Only a faint, clear consciousness remains, still present within it.

Ju Xiaofu  
Beijing, April 12, 2026