An ode to the clarinet

"It was the first collaboration between me and Wang Tao. He gave me lots of freedom while we did the recording," the pianist adds.

Wang, who was born in Chengdu, Sichuan province, studied the cello and erhu (a two-stringed bowed instrument) in childhood before picking up the clarinet when he was 9 years old. At 11, he was admitted to the middle school affiliated with the Sichuan Conservatory of Music. He was the first musician in China to receive a master's degree in the clarinet from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, a top music school in the country. He has been teaching at the school since 2002.

Wang has released 12 albums which are now used as teaching materials at the conservatory. He also won the Best Instrumental Album award at the Golden Melody Awards in Taiwan.

In 2014, he signed a contract with Universal Music China and released the album Night & Day which merges the clarinet with pop, rock and jazz.

In 2017, he released the classical album Schubert in which he selected some of Austrian composer Franz Schubert's most beautiful melodies and arranged them for the clarinet, including Auf dem Wasser zu singen (To Sing On the Water), D. 774, Ave Maria (Ellen's Gesang) D. 839, and An die Musik (To Music), D. 547.

"I can still recall that after the last day of the recording of the Schubert album, I sat on the street outside the Salle de Musique of La Chaux-de-Fonds (the famous concert hall in Switzerland where Wang recorded the album), thinking of all the things I didn't like about myself while recording the album," Wang says.

The process of creating his latest album was a similarly exhausting experience that involved much self-doubt.

Half a year before the recording, Wang practiced eight hours a day at home because all the pieces were new to him and employed new techniques such as circular breathing.

As a father of a 3-year-old son, he felt guilty about isolating himself from his family since he had to invest much time into the preparation of the new album.

"I feel grateful to my wife because she has been supportive and never complains," says Wang, who married the former Olympic gymnastics champion Liu Xuan in 2013. "The name of the album, Spin, is called Xuan in Chinese, because I want to dedicate it to my wife."

To promote his new album, Wang is touring around Chinese cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, with pianist Fukuhara.