With the exception of Chen Yi’s Duo Ye, a work that intelligently internalizes traditional Chinese motives within a decidedly modernist context, all the pieces on this disc are conservatively crafted, easy to absorb, quite pretty, and relatively anonymous. Imagine early Debussy or less-caustic-than-usual Prokofiev creating piano miniatures from Chinese themes, and you get the gist of this attractive, enjoyable, and unpretentious music. Li Fan’s sensitive pianism certainly evokes the images behind the picturesque titles. He makes colorful impressions with Wang Jianzhong’s harp-like passagework and with the gentle, distant percussion effects in Li Ying Hai’s Flute and Drum at Sunset. The disc’s only drawback concerns its boxy, constricted sonics–akin to a small, acoustically dead teaching studio.
