China Meets Europe
Erhu and piano: Fascinating interaction of cultures
Bad Kissingen / Maria Bildhausen

　　A concert experience of the special kind was waiting for the audience of the second part of the matinee.

　　Two instruments that belong to the most important ones in their respective cultures came here together, and two exceptional artists proved with their musicality, their enormous virtuosity and their humor that what one had believed barely possible: The erhu, the two-string Chinese violin, and the European piano are able to give a concert so enthusiastically that the audience does not think at all of things like exotic worlds of sounds. What the Chinese erhu virtuoso Ma Xiaohui and the pianist Tim Ovens performed was no crossover experiment, but absolutely fascinating music. A partly Chinese, partly European program began with “Ting Song” of the composer Hua Yan Jun died in 1950. The introduction by piano with almost familiar sound was followed by the erhu that began in a first irritating way. But quickly it became clear that the interplay of the two instruments generated an astonishing, striking, and interesting blend and that the erhu with its romantic sound colors very well fits the favorite instrument of the German Romantics. Miss Ma explained that the erhu (= two strings) of 1,500 years of age is the most common instrument in both China’s folk and China’s chamber and orchestra music. She demonstrated the flexible tone creation that can come very close to the human voice. Moreover, the small corpus covered with snake skin can be used as a hand drum as well.

　　Precisely in the European compositions it became clear what fascinating possibilities of sound this instrument has. In this way one could recognize all of a sudden in Antonin Dvorak’s Slavic Dances op. 46/8 that a new authenticity revealed itself through the transformation of the familiar into something strange. For the erhu is much closer to the folk music with its richness of forms, from which Dvorak drew, than to the technically mediated violin that sounds more artificial. It was here and in the rousingly performed Six Romanian Folk Dances SZ 56 by Bela Bartok that the compositions found back to their origins. But it was also obvious that the erhu is a genuine and independent instrument that has its own fascinating tonal character and that Miss Ma is a brilliant interpreter, mastering virtuously all possibilities of her tender instrument and playing her truly personal interpretations with enormous humor and refinement.
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　　The Chinese compositions demonstrated once again what a rich musical tradition one can discover beyond the China palace jingles. The most compact and fascinating one was Ma Xiaohui’s own composition “The Story of Two Strings.” Carefully plucked piano strings, normally hit piano tones, glissandi, and flageolet tones of the erhu mounted up to an almost ecstatic climax, sometimes enforced by the singing voice, before the whole (The “Story” seems to have both a stormy and an affectionate happy end.) came to a tender end.
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