Colouring Book
March 28, 2025
Gramophone Magazine Editor’s Choice
In Colouring Book the etude is presented as a vehicle for creative innovation and exploration. The album features Claude Debussy’s complete 12 Études, alongside Études by contemporary composers Matthew Aucoin and Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade, as well as my own passacaglia on a theme by Radiohead.
Gramophone: You don’t have to know the Radiohead original to appreciate Fu’s ingeniously busy yet never cluttered polyrhythmic aplomb, or revel in the unpredictable variety from variation to variation. Needless to say, Fu plays his own music with tremendous authority and colouristic resources, as he also does with the Cruttwell-Reade and Aucoin selections… As for the Debussy Études, Fu’s recordings contain some of the most enchantingly characterised interpretations I’ve heard since those of Ju-Ying Song, Florent Boffard, Mitsuko Uchida and Jean-Efflam Bavouzet. Yes, they’re that good!
BBC Music Magazine: This is an artist who unites seriousness with playfulness, intellectual curiosity and imagination. And so it proves in his playing.
…His refreshing programme is framed by the two books of Debussy’s dozen Études… Fu makes them sound as if they had just been written, his playing clean and crisp, never overstated but often marvellous… The contemporary numbers make for a fresh twist.
TRIO ZIMBALIST: Piano Trios of Weinberg, Auerbach, & Dvořák
January 12, 2024
Gramophone Magazine Editor’s Choice
Trio Zimbalist’s debut album of piano trios by Mieczyslaw Weinberg, Lera Auerbach, and Antonín Dvořák is cast in the spirit of the Dumka, containing works composed under the shadows of troubled and traumatic political histories.
Photo: Raphael Neal
MIRRORS
November 11, 2022
2024 BBC Music Magazine Newcomer Award Winner
Works by Andres, Chin, Dutilleux, Ravel, Rachmaninov, Tailleferre, Waley-Cohen
BBC Music Magazine: Ravel’s Miroirs is the starting point for this keyboard essay, and it’s all rather breathtaking. Fu’s approach is intelligent but fuelled by a deep emotion and understanding of the repertoire (here both old and new); his touch on the keys is barely apparent in the Ravel, with the music flowing gossamer-like.
International Piano Magazine: Each movement of Ravel’s epoch defining Miroirs finds an echo in later pieces. Interleaving the music in this way offers an enhanced appreciation of Ravel’s importance in the musical continuum. For example, a beautiful performance of ‘Noctuelles’ and a haunting ‘Oiseaux tristes’ are followed by the Dutilleux prelude ‘Le jeu des contraires’, which prolongs the atmosphere while emphasising retrogrades and inversions… Chin’s Ligeti-influenced Etude is a fiery toccata, rendered here with supreme confidence… Fu’s fluent and nuanced ‘Barque’ is one of the finest available, his ‘Alborada’ joyous.
Gramophone: Musicality and intelligence govern George Xiaoyuan Fu’s programming agenda, resulting in a genuinely interesting rather than gimmicky playlist… Fu’s precise fingerwork cannot be faulted, and his gift for programme-building deserves serious attention.