Shanghai Odyssey - the Bund

Shanghai, currently the most populous city in the world, presents a strikingly unique combination of modernistic skyscrapers and magnificent colonial houses whose images are reflected in the high-rise buildings. The entire city is externally and internally characterised by exciting contrasts. I have taken up this principle in my Shanghai Odyssey, in the sense of a musical translation of the city’s mega-urbanity. The external architecture of my work consists of five symmetrically arranged chapters whereas the internal structure displays harmonic formations of constantly varying density and rhythmic patterns that move in an ever progressing flow. Christian Jost