Hitting rare notes

A music teacher is working to make the ancient Chinese zither popular with young people. Chen Nan reports.

The world premiere of seven musical pieces by Chinese composers was at the concert Music Contemporary From China 2018 at Alice Tully Hall of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York in late January. The composers are all faculty members of the Beijing-based Central Conservatory of Music.

The piece, also performed by musicians from the conservatory, featured both traditional Chinese instruments and Western instruments.

"The new works have different styles and guzheng (Chinese zither) is capable of making versatile sounds," says Ji Wei, a player of the instrument and an associate professor at the Central Conservatory of Music.

"I was very excited and couldn't wait to share the new music with the audience in the United States," Ji says of her preparations in Beijing before the concert of Jan 27.

Ji, 39, began to learn the ancient plucked instrument as a child and recalls how audiences were curious about guzheng when she first performed abroad in Japan and the United States in the early 1990s.

"Even while I was in an elevator with my guzheng placed next to me, people who entered the elevator would ask me about it," Ji says.

Now, she says more composers are interested in the instrument and are willing to write music for it, which has kept guzheng alive as well as expanded its repertoire in recent times.

Before the concert in New York, Ji had performed with the Vienna University Philharmonic at the Musikverein in Vienna on Dec 11 in a concert, which was the European premiere of composer Vijay Upadhyaya's new work, the 75-minute Chang'an Men. Upadhyaya, an Indian-born, Vienna-based composer was commissioned to produce the piece by the China National Symphony Orchestra.