City Hall Concert Hall, tonight, 8pm
Erhu master Wang Guotong celebrates 50 years of music making and playing tonight with an East-West crossover concert. Together with his son, Ray Wong Hae, also a seasoned erhu player, the 71-year-old will perform with the Pro Arte Orchestra of Hong Kong under the baton of Choi Ho-man.
'What makes this concert special is that all the musicians in this ensemble are under the age of 25, so we are promoting erhu music to the post-1980s and post-90s generations,' says Ray (right, with his father), 38. 'Not many young people get a chance to hear erhu playing these days, so as Chinese musicians we have the responsibility to keep the art form alive.'
In recent years, father and son have been working on reinventing the image of erhu music by introducing new playing techniques and writing contemporary pieces that emphasise the versatility of the instrument in both sound and range. Hence tonight's one-off concert, veering away from the traditional repertoire, will include works such as Vittorio Monti's Csardas played on erhu, The Butterfly Lovers (Gaohu Concerto), as well as a number of popular Chinese classics with new arrangements and interpretations.
The concert will close with Listening to the Pines, a piece that composer Hua Yanjun wrote especially for Wang senior, one of the world's finest erhu players. His innovative rendition of The Sanmen Gorge Capriccio was hailed in the 1960s as introducing a new style for the instrument.
Over the years, Wang has composed or arranged several hundred erhu pieces and etudes, and recorded about 30 albums. His album Reflections of the Moon on the Waters was awarded the First Gold Disc Prize by the China Record Corporation in 1989.