"Finely nuanced compositions"

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The second quarterly list 2018 of the German Record Critics' Award was published on May 15. The current CD by HfMT professor Xiaoyong Chen was nominated in the best list

Jury member Marita Emigholz on the nomination:
"First and foremost, Xiaoyong Chen's music is about the fading of sound, about the fading or rather the evaporation of both real and artificial sound worlds. European instruments sound Asian, and Asian instruments are integrated into European art music. Chen is a student of Ligeti; he came to Germany from China in 1985 at the age of thirty and now lives in Hamburg as a professor of composition. As he describes himself, he is a "passionate listener", and this is exactly what you can hear in his music. Predominantly slow and quiet, it demands the utmost attention and concentration. The Chinese ensemble Les Amis Shanghai is a congenial advocate of these finely nuanced compositions."

Xiaoyong Chen "Imaginative Reflections"
Ensemble Les Amis Shanghai
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Chen Xiaoyong first studied violin in Beijing and then composition at the Central Conservatory from 1980 to 1985. Immediately afterwards, he completed postgraduate studies with György Ligeti at the University of Music and Drama in Hamburg until 1989. Chen Xiaoyong was awarded the Christoph and Stephan Kaske Prize in Munich in 1993 and the Bach Prize Scholarship of the Hanseatic City of Hamburg in 1995. Guest professorships have taken him to Taiwan, Hong Kong and the People's Republic of China since 1997. Chen has been a lecturer at the Asia-Africa Institute at the University of Hamburg since 1987 and lives as a freelance composer in Hamburg.
Xiaoyong Chen has been Professor of Composition and Intercultural Mediation at the HfMT since October 2013.