Notes from a solitary pianist

"It was extremely intense," he recalls. "Over 72 hours, I spent almost half the time in the studio. By the end, we did not even have the energy for a proper celebration dinner. We just grabbed something simple and went home." Yet, he remembers the experience with a smile. "It was exhausting, but it also made me happy. A lot of happiness is built on enormous fatigue."

The album also draws inspiration from China's "misty poetry" movement, the influential literary movement that emerged in the late 20th century and embraced symbolism, ambiguity and indirect expression.

For Ju, mist does not represent confusion. It is another way of seeing clearly.

"In mist, you cannot immediately see everything," he says. "But sometimes because you cannot see everything, you notice details more clearly."

He connects this idea with the German concept of Weltschmerz — an awareness of the world's suffering and contradictions accompanied by melancholy and empathy. But translating such a concept into another language is itself an artistic challenge.

"A German speaker immediately understands that word," he says. "But if you translate it directly into another language, the feeling disappears." His solution was not literal translation but creative transformation.

"Language is not only about meaning," he says. "Sometimes it is also about imagination."