The Art of the Chinese Guzheng

This album is a tribute to the main regional styles of guzheng (21-string zither) music in China. Having worked with Wu Mengmeng in the past and seen her perform, I am keenly aware of how technically sound she is as a player. She could therefore have easily programmed an album of modern virtuosic pieces to show off her mastery of the multifarious contemporary techniques.

Instead, Mengmeng and producer Jiang Li have opted to survey the different regional guzheng styles, featuring traditional pieces from Chaozhou, Shanxi, Shandong Daban, Jiangnan, Zhejiang and Henan Bantou Qu styles. The risk of doing this for an album aimed at the international market is that the listeners may not be sufficiently familiar with the idiomatic nuances that distinguish the styles of the different regions. For instance, ‘Best Wishes’, through a lively performance, effectively displays the melodic emphasis of the Jiangnan sizhu genre, while ‘Winter Crows Playing in Water’ employs the unique tuning (quarter tones for the fourth and seventh notes of the scale) representative of the Chaozhou region. ‘Plum Blossom Melody’, on the other hand, is an effective arrangement of a familiar piece better known in its guqin (seven-stringed zither) and dizi (flute) versions. However, as with ‘Lament of the Great Wall’, there is no accreditation of the arranger. This piece – which has been split into the first and last tracks – is a highlight of the album, effectively book-ending a musical tour around China with a glimpse of the luxurious extravagance that is the guzheng.