By Janet Hammock
I attended an amazing erhu concert in the Chapel yesterday afternoon. This morning I wrote some personal, informal reflections on the concert from the point of view of a Westerner who knows almost nothing about Chinese music. I am Professor Emeritus of Music, Mount Allison University, but my experience of music is almost completely of the Western tradition. I wondered if you might be interested in publishing my reflections. I have copied them below.
On November 30th in the afternoon I attended a wonderful concert in the Mount Allison Chapel. Entitled “Two Lines of Sound A Thousand Threads of Thought: an Afternoon of Erhu and Poetry” the recital was offered by the National Cultural and Creative Association of Canada. As a musician I was interested in attending mainly because I am not familiar with erhu music, or with the instrument itself, and I wanted to learn more. I wrote some quite informal reflections this morning on my experience, and hope to share these with Mount Allison students and staff.
There was a sprinkling of Mount Allison people I recognized, but most in the audience were Chinese people of all ages whom I didn’t know.
The erhu concert was strange and beautiful. Chinese is such a different culture from ours. The MC, Charles Pan, was a marvelous mixture of teacher, describer of how emotions and feelings are universal so it doesn’t really matter if we totally understand what we are hearing, enthusiast, and nightclub-announcer-type sometimes reminiscent of the evening entertainment MCs at resorts!!
The erhu soloist, Chen Fei, was stunningly beautiful and graceful. Even when playing with power and zest, she created absolutely gorgeous music. She is an internationally famous erhu artist, based in Moncton for the past year. I think she has a very high level of artistry and a flawless technique. She was dressed for the first half in a dusky rose gown and heels, and for the second half in a deeply dark turquoise velvet gown with appliqué white flowers on one shoulder.
Playing with her occasionally was a young male erhu player, her son, LI Haoyue, dressed in a starched white shirt which was heavily sprinkled with gleaming gold sequins which sparkled and shone in the golden spotlight. Their duo was amazing. Obviously he has received superb training from his mother.
Chen Fei also performed a few pieces with piano accompaniment. The first was with a young girl, perhaps about 17 years of age, who played a Chopin Opus Posthumous waltz while the erhu played a layer of music on top of it. The second was with a very good pianist, PAN Yuhan, a young man, who later in conversation told me that he had a (piano) music degree from Western but now works in a completely different field and was a little out of practice! And the third was with a really cute young boy, filled with zest and obvious love for the music, who played with a stuffed animal fastened to his right shoulder! The two boys were dressed in immaculate white cotton shirts and black pants.
Other erhu works were played with ensembles of Chinese instruments which emerged from the digital piano as pre-recorded background accompaniment.
Near the intermission was a recitation of two long Romantic poems by Chinese poets entitled “Whence Comes the Wind, I Cannot Say” and “I Want to Waste Time With You”recited in the Mandarin language by a woman, LI Wei, who was introduced as someone who had been an artist in China. Since coming to Canada she was “just a housewife”, the host said, chuckling, and that she had been persuaded by Chinese friends — maybe himself! — to recite the poem. I realized that the host did not intend to denigrate the role as housewife, but rather to say that she had many artistic talents, too, and that she need not hide them because she feared they would not be appreciated or understood in Western culture, but should allow them to shine as a way of helping us Westerners to begin to know and appreciate the beauty of Chinese poetry.
She delivered the poem in a heartfelt dramatic style, looking heavenward, while a piece of Chinese music was played through the piano. She was a study in a formal type of beauty. Her face was radiant, glowing. She stood to deliver the poem, but towards the end she made her way up a few stairs to a chair on the platform where she completed the recitation. The chair, on which the erhu player also sat, was set amid swaths of thin white fabric imprinted with Chinese symbols. I was concerned that the poetry reciter might slip on this fabric with her high heels, but she managed to sit without incident.
For me, one of the most wonderful aspects of the program for me was that it gave me an opportunity to look directly at Chinese people. In life, of course, it is very rude to stare, and mist of us avoid looking for any length of time at anyone of another race. Consequently, we never really ”see” them. A recital is a venue where it is perfectly fine and encouraged to look directly at the performers! I was thrilled to be able to enjoy the faces, body language, and other visual aspects as the performers entered, played, and then departed the stage. The face of Chen Fei, the erhu player, was simply beautiful, as was the face of LI Wei, who delivered the dramatic poetry reading. As I watched and listened I could feel my heart opening gradually both to the music and to them.
All of this was impeccably presented. For me as a Westerner it was an unusual combination of artistic ultra-formality and jovial informality which I find almost impossible to describe. Even the way the erhu artist sat on her chair, at each moment presented a perfect, exquisite formal picture — legs placed just so, feet arranged, dress patted down exactly, and face reflective of the beauty of the music.
The music ranged in styles from the Canadian folk song Red River Valley to erhu music of ancient China, and everything in between! The concert was their sincere attempt to present their Chinese culture, and sometimes to overlay it with our culture, both musically and in the “style” of presentation. The underlying premise was that while most Westeners and Chinese do not understand each others’ cultures and languages, we can find beauty in each, and can learn more about each other simply by listening to the music and poetry of each other’s cultures.
Near the beginning of the program, the host had described his experience of arriving in Canada 10 years ago to study at a university here, not knowing a word of English. However he said that as a child he had loved to hear the English language, and described how it felt when, little by little, he began to study and learn to understand and to speak. He also described an important experience he had as a very young child in China, listening to a recording his parents had in the house of a Tchaikovsky symphony —and really liking it! The idea was continually put forth that we can enjoy listening to things we do not understand. So when LI Wei recited the poem in Mandarin, we simply sat and listened to the beautiful sounds of the language rather than trying to follow along with the translation in the program.
In the intermission I spoke with the host for several minutes. It turns out he is working on his PhD in art in Fredericton, and is the music director at the Chinese Church in Moncton. At the end of the concert the audience clapped fervently and the performers took many bows! They made themselves available to all of us afterwards, and I congratulated everyone!
Here is a short video clip which will give you an idea of the sound of the erhu, and a comprehensive review of this concert when it was presented in Fredericton in October.
• Dr. Janet Hammock, Professor Emeritus of Music, Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB