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Wong Hok-yeung opens the Hong Kong Composers' Guild's RESONATING COLOURS 5 with Night Poem, a composition for cello and piano. Rhapsodic and ambling, the piece conjures nightly thoughts, welling up and vanishing with lifelike authenticity. Chan Chin-ting brings two pieces for solo violin Cross Currents, an exploration of the violin's full tonal range, and Postcards, an assortment of Inchsix miniatures/musical gifts,Inch which can be played as standalone pieces, but also feature a common theme that unites them. Lee Kar-tai's Pyrus Flower in the Rain is a minimalist evocation of temporality. Written for solo piano, it's structure and execution reveal a great deliberation and decisiveness behind every single note and effect, quite like a traditional ink-and-washing painting. Stretch of Light, a contrabass quintet by Chen Yeung-ping, starts out with drawn-out notes more reminiscent of fragmented Indian raga music than of Chinese composition. But the surprise is unwarranted After all, Stretch of Light is supposed to be an examination of the nature of space, and the long, layered lines evoke this quite naturally. Dyeing, a trio for violin, clarinet, and cello by Au Tin-yung was inspired by an anecdote experienced by the ancient Chinese philosopher Mozi, who was mesmerized by the process of coloring fabric. Au Tin-yung aims to explore this fascinating yet utilitarian process in his composition, in which he handles the instruments' different timbres in quite the same manner in which a craftsman would handle differently-textured fabrics. Seasonal changes are at the heart of November Winds by Ng Chun-hoi, a string quartet as ephemeral as the annual variances in weather and nature. This impression is counterbalanced by another work by the composer, Prelude II, a tonal composition for two guitars which employs the instruments in both a melodic and percussive fashion. Finally, W
