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Yet in my sad heart (2025)

For Percussion quartet and track

~9 minutes

Yet in my sad heart for percussion quartet and track draws inspiration from the opening of Chopin’s Prelude No. 8 in F sharp Minor. The title comes from pianist Alfred Cortot’s vivid description of the prelude: “The snow falls, the wind screams, and the storm rages; yet in my sad heart, the tempest is the worst to behold.”

Chopin’s Prelude, marked Molto agitato, is a powerful and technically demanding work. It features a continuous flow of thirty-second notes in the right hand against triplet sixteenths in the left, creating a tempestuous, virtuosic soundscape. Within this intricate polyrhythm, a melancholic melody emerges, giving voice to the “sad heart” described by Cortot.

My piece, Yet in my sad heart, offers a hazy, dream-like reinterpretation of the Chopin. Fragments of the Prelude arise from the keyboard percussion instruments, slowed down and stretched out against long, sustained synth tones. Meanwhile, as the music shifts into different key areas, the same four chords that began the Chopin, slowly cycle in the background. We stay in this space, a web of percussion, long synth chords and pulsating rhythms, until eventually a delicate cloud of piano arpeggiations in the track take over, slowly enveloping the live musicians. Finally, the piece culminates in a stream-of-consciousness soundscape of swirling, ghostly tones mixed with real world audiosamples, eerily concluding this strange, Chopin-inspired fever dream.

Yet in My Sad Heart was commissioned by The Up:Strike Project, Dr. Matthew Lau & Karen Yu, directors. It was premiered on Saturday, June 8, 2025 at the Sheung Wan Civic Centre Theater, Hong Kong by the Up:Strike Project, featuring Matthew Lau, Karen Yu, Samuel Chan, and Bevis Ng.

June 8, 2025 | Sheung Wan Civic Centre Theater, Hong Kong. The Up:Strike Project (Matthew Lau, Karen Yu, Samuel Chan, and Bevis Ng)