Fantasyland

“I often take my daughter to amusement parks,” composer Yu-Peng Chen tells Apple Music Classical. “Whenever I go to Universal Studios, for example, I feel that the music there has a very significant impact on me. Every time I hear it, it makes me happy and I get immersed in it. My daughter loves the rides, but I’m entirely focused on listening to the music.” Fantasyland, a collection of vivid, cinematic works for orchestra and solo piano, is Chen’s homage to those amusement parks, evoking them both in a literal sense, and in the way they help us escape the everyday. In the helter-skelter “Ascending Dive Towards the Pyramidion”, combining multiple musical influences including jazz and traditional Indian, Yu-Peng takes us on an exhilarating roller-coaster ride. And in “Infinite Cloister of Flowers and Sins”, listeners are led inside a maze (although not necessarily back out again). “I subtly integrated the tango into the theme, into the labyrinth,” says Chen, “making listeners feel like they’re stuck inside.” It’s a fascinating experiment in terms of musical styles, and the way they can evoke different feelings, adds Yu-Peng. For a taste of Chen’s signature “feel-good” music, head to “Flourishing Lights of the Snowmelt Realm”, in which a blend of western and Chinese music conjures an atmosphere of pure optimism. “This piece is about home, or reunion, or finding light in the darkness,” says Chen, “and this is the style I’m most proficient in—I think the pentatonic scale [a principal element of Chinese music] conveys feelings of home really effectively.” That Fantasyland succeeds in its synthesis of so many different types of music is testament to Chen’s background. Educated at Shenzhen Arts School and the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Chen rose to prominence on the back of his work on the video game Genshin Impact where he developed his skills at fusing east and west musical traditions. “Genshin Impact used classical orchestration which was intended to help the game spread throughout the world. The game’s design concepts fused various elements from all over the world, so when I was creating different styles of music, I accumulated a lot of techniques and musical styles.” Perhaps it’s no surprise, given the wide landscapes of his music, that one of Chen’s major influences is the great Studio Ghibli soundtrack composer, Joe Hisaishi, whose scores have accompanied almost all of Hayao Miyazaki’s animated films. “It was Hisaishi’s music that sparked my interest in composition,” says Chen. “The earliest, in fact, was his score for Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. I was six years old when I heard that music—I didn’t understand the movie at the time, but the music had me in tears.” You’ll hear constant nods to Hisaishi throughout Fantasyland, particularly in Chen’s use of the accordion that lends a Michel Legrand flavour to much of the album. “The accordion is like a guide leading the listener into the world of the album,” says Chen. “It’s present from the first track to the last, like a voiceover narrating a story. That’s one of the album’s design concepts.” The influence of John Williams, particularly the US film composer’s score for Harry Potter, also runs through Fantasyland, and in particular “Circle Dance of the Evernight Castle”. And ever-present are Chen’s classical heroes that surely helped him in his quest to fuse old and new worlds. “My two favourite composers are Bach and Rachmaninoff,” he says; “I especially like Bach’s rigour in music, and I also particularly like Rachmaninoff’s deep, profound outpouring of emotion.” A solid structure and heart-on-sleeve emotions: surely the two most important ingredients for the perfect amusement park.