Guan Xia Guan Xia

XIA GUAN  (b 1957 ) 

The renowned Chinese composer Xia Guan (b.1957) graduated from the China Central Conservatory of Music in 1985, having already won plaudits in composition competitions at home and abroad. He is highly regarded as a composer of both concert music and TV soundtracks, having provided the music for three successful Chinese television series (most notably I Love My Family). His concert music, including the Symphonic Ballade ‘Sorrowful Dawn’ (featured on this recording) and the opera Mulan Psalm, have been performed to great acclaim in China, New York, Vienna, Tokyo and Moscow—where it was the first Chinese opera ever to be staged at the Mariinsky Theatre. Guan has also composed several symphonies, a Piano Concerto, the symphonic fantasy Farewell My Concubine, and a Chinese national opera, Sorrowful Dawn, premièred in Beijing in 2001.

Guan has won notable awards from the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York and the Wiener Staatsoper. He is currently the director of the China National Symphony Orchestra and involved in a number of Chinese national committees working with musicians and composers. He has featured among a recent list of ‘One Hundred Outstanding Contemporary Artists’ produced by the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles.