Your present and upcoming projects — could you give us snapshot into your various works-in-progress?

I am now composing. Concerts continue. I am releasing a new CD, In One Take this summer/fall in Paris. It is a CD that highlights classical erhu and guzheng (Chinese zither) duos. I’ll begin working on my next CD as of fall, this time also as an erhu-guzheng duo.

In addition, I am working with different Baroque and jazz groups, working on Bach, Vivaldi…

Tell us about the development of erhu music in the contemporary Chinese society, and our world.

Generally speaking, the development of erhu music in China over the past twenty years has been growing fast and steadily. More and more children are learning to play erhu, and of course more amateurs. The problem is that many contemporary erhu performers, i.e. the newer post-Cultural Revolution generation, are “nowhere — neither East nor West.” At the same time that they try to imitate performers from the West, they fail to master what is most Orientally attractive and original about their own culture and tradition. There is a fashion of blindly worshipping the Occident among the young generation, to the extent that they are better at imitating or learning Western artistic expressions than mastering, fine-tuning or learning what belongs to themselves. Piano is a good example.

Erhu music in contemporary Chinese society is threatened by the fact that erhu concerts do not sell in the mainstream culture. Like guzheng (Chinese zither), for instance, it is considered an elite art. Art tastes in the contemporary Chinese society are pretty commercialized. What sells most is popular music by television singers or pop stars.

Guo Gan performing with Fiona Sze-Lorrain at UNESCO
(Paris, France, June 2010)
COURTESY OF REGARDS AILLEURS

In the world at large, there are now, of course, more professional erhu players spread across the globe. But not all of them persevere in their erhu careers. Many of them, after having led professional careers as musicians in China, opt to do something else once they move abroad. There are many reasons why. Some of them want to earn money, have family obligations, marry and have children, etc. There are at five or six erhu professional players in Paris, for example. Most of them play once in a while for festive celebrations in the Chinese community, just for fun, but they do not venture beyond that. They have their day-jobs, or other careers. Overall, there are now more opportunities for Westerners to appreciate erhu music, but erhu solo concerts are still relatively limited, and real, good erhu players at the concert level with a good understanding of world cultures and sensibilities are hard to come by. While more Chinese are learning to play the erhu, it is not the case for Westerners, who maintain their enthusiasm for this instrument at the level of appreciation. Unlike the Chinese, the Westerners resist imitating others. Therefore, it is still rather rare that Westerners pick up the instrument and play it, let alone perform it. Besides, audiences do not wish to see a non-Chinese playing a Chinese instrument. There is a stigma somehow. They want the “complete image” of a Chinese playing a Chinese instrument. Everyone easily knows who Beethoven or Schubert is, but no one knows in the Western society (or the Chinese society, for that matters) who the erhu masters are, for example. Perhaps even less than 1% really know who they really are, after all.