Important players / recordings for Erhu / Pipa

[wfranklin]

I'm a complete newbie to chinese music (and culture/everything). I'm taking a performane course at my uni in chinese music and i was wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of some important musical pieces so that i can acquaint myself with standard repertoire. I'm interested in studying erhu or the pipa so I'd like to know about the best recordings and the best players.

thanks in advance

[LiYuanXi]

二泉映月 is a famous piece for erhu and 十面埋伏 for pipa.

[wfranklin]

um, thanks for the reply, but I don't know chinese at all and definitely can't read it. (I'm a born and bred american)

[LiYuanXi]

oops.. sorry,

Try downloading the famous erhu piece here:

http://www.guqu.net/soft/1669.htm

Click on the green arrow button!

and this for the pipa:

http://www.guqu.net/soft/383.htm

[davidmdahl]

The tune LiYuanXi is recommending is Er Quan Ying Yue (Quan is pronounced like 'schwann'), or in English "The Moon Reflected on the Second Springs" by Abing. This is indeed a wonderful tune. There is a video clip of a performance on solo erhu at the following site:

www.musicfromchina.org

Click on "meet our musicians" and scroll down to the first streaming video.

Also, you could do worse than the following CD, easily obtainable from amazon.com.

Spirit on Two Strings

Jie-Bing Chen

Highly recommended! This CD includes Erquan (The Moon Reflected on the Second Springs) and other excellent tunes. Actually Erquan is included on just about every erhu CD you can buy. Well, not really, but almost.

I can suggest other erhu CDs that can be harder to find, if you are interested.

Best wishes,

David

Portland, Oregon