I found it interesting that he’s doing real honest-to-goodness POLYTONALITY, a la that great, acidic 1920s-Berlin style. (Everybody might think it was done to death 75 years ago, but I think it’s actually pretty rare, and even rarer pursued with such a sharp ear.) He’s very good at weaving these long, elaborate melodies through a thicket of heterogenous textures, too. The “chinoiserie” pops up now and then; some of the gilsses, a bit of pentatonic melody, the Beijing Opera cymbal… but nothing too hokey. Whether he’s found his own “voice” or not… well, seems to me he’s found a good part of it.

I do think that the separate concertos are a bit too “compact”, in that current concert-fashion of “give us a work between 10 and 12 minutes”. Some of these are enough of a piece to string a number of them into a single, larger work. And there are a couple moments where the movements just “give up” in some lyrical or dramatic gesture — that I’m sure was irresistable — when some part of me can hear that everything is just aching to push on and kick into another gear.

Not sure who Mr. Taub is (?Robert Taub), but as the author of the review, I can say that you’re certainly welcome to disagree with my observation. We’re still in a country with free speech…well, kinda. If you read the review again, I think you’ll get it that I was disappointed that I had to say something negative about the album, and certainly tried hard to include some positives. But I have to be honest, and in all honesty, I don’t like the music. We can’t always review stuff we like, and if we did, life would be boring. As far as how much I know about Eastern music: I’m not sure that’s relevant, but let’s just say I like to think I’m reasonably familiar with it, albeit no “expert.” But I stand by the “synthesist” comment, which is consistent with other things I’ve read about the composer after I wrote my review.

We all incorporate many different influences. But in the end, I’d like to think we still find our own voices. Ives incorporated tons of different influences, as did Feldman, Cowell, Partch, yadda yadda yadda. But all of these clearly had their own voice. I just didn’t feel that way about Huang Ruo’s music, and if that’s how his music made me feel, that’s how it is. Many people don’t get my own music, family members included, and they’re certainly entitled to their feelings, as are you. And, by extension, so am I.

One of the things I was curious about was just how to make the distinction between a synthesist and a composer. Can’t the act of combining be the message in itself?

I e-mailed Huang and invited him to comment; hopefully, he’ll take me up on it.