Featured recordings | Kaiwen Shi

Kaiwen Shi Mantro Fantasie

This piece is inspired by the Shurangama Mantra. It tries to portray a spiritual journey of struggling with attachment and desire, falling again and again, and gradually moving toward stillness and awakening. After the mantra theme, the sound of a bell pulls the listener back to reality. Desire rises like a tide, and the pursuit of success and praise gradually leads into arrogance, anger, and suffering. At the desperate point, a variation of the mantra theme returns like a reminder: only by going through the trials of life and learning to release attachment can one find real freedom and happiness. In the end, after accepting the impermanence and pain of life, the music returns to the purity, stillness, and compassion contained in the mantra theme.

Beethoven Op. 109 2nd Movement

The music features the perpetual-motion character typical of Beethoven’s late style.

Beethoven Sonata in E Major, Op. 109

Ludwig van Beethoven’s Op. 109 is one of his important late-period works. This performance seeks to convey the vivid imagination and deeply tangible dramatic tension that lie beneath his refined and distilled compositional style.