Your father, Guo Junming (1940-2010) played an important role in your life as an erhu artist. Could you share with us more? How did your interest in erhu music begin?

I started playing the erhu at the age of four. Yes, I was trained entirely by my father, Guo Junming, in the family tradition of apprenticeship, from one generation to another. You can say that I inherited the Guo family’s art of erhu. My father taught me the theories and performance of the art, literally from hand to hand, and from scratch. Although he cultivated my upbringing in erhu, he did not specifically expect that I would grow up to be like him, an erhu musician. He was very free and relaxed as far as my personal choices are concerned.

Since I was young, I was interested in many things. I took violin, cello and piano lessons, and was also trained (for four years) in percussion. I also enjoyed sports tremendously, such as table-tennis, football and swimming. I was also a serious stamp-collector, and have a passion for painting. I took formal drawing lessons at the art conservatory for two years. I seriously decided to develop my erhu career because after settling in Europe, I realized how much potential there is for me regarding expanding traditional folk music in another culture. Of course, I took on the path of erhu because there is a passion in me for this instrument.

How do you feel now that your father has passed on, and you are performing with his instrument?

Feelings are very profound, to answer your question. Concertizing with my father’s instrument is like an extension of my dialogues with him. It is at once intimate and deep, not just sentimental. It also feels very real and physical, as if I’m touching my father, and he is touching me. All these feelings last, even after a concert.

Guo Gan with his father,
Guo Junming
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

Technically speaking, performing on my father’s erhu facilitates me greatly, in huge part because my father was a skillful musician who had managed to keep the soul of this erhu alive. After twenty-five years or more of performing in public and working in private with this instrument, he had produced in it very beautiful sonorities and tone colors. So playing on such a good instrument can only help me much as far as rendering music alive onstage. It brings me convenience.

Emotionally speaking, however, it is very difficult and complex for me. It is my feelings that are hard to master. I can get emotionally overwhelmed, particularly when the instrument also brings back many memories. My father’s death changed me greatly. But as you know, it is important to keep a healthy distance between oneself and his/her instrument, as well as with the repertoire in question. If one does not manage to control his/her feelings about the instrument, it is even harder to control the music. This can’t happen onstage, because when you perform, you need to be accountable to other players in an orchestra, for example; your emotions affect their interpretation too.

Finally, the instrument contains my father’s voice. Playing on an instrument that was once his translates in some ways to rendering his voice alive. I have my own voice, too, as a performer, and I need to maintain my own voice and style — while using his erhu. Music, like literature, is about the voice. Evidently, there are differences between my style and my father’s approach. My father was much more “open” and “all-embracing” when he performed (even though offstage, he was very much an old, traditional erudite). When I perform, I am more controlled. This has to do with our personalities. So I have to make sure that my own individual style and personality stays intact, now that I have inherited his erhu.

Your present and upcoming projects — could you give us snapshot into your various works-in-progress?

I am now composing. Concerts continue. I am releasing a new CD, In One Take this summer/fall in Paris. It is a CD that highlights classical erhu and guzheng (Chinese zither) duos. I’ll begin working on my next CD as of fall, this time also as an erhu-guzheng duo.

In addition, I am working with different Baroque and jazz groups, working on Bach, Vivaldi…

Tell us about the development of erhu music in the contemporary Chinese society, and our world.

Generally speaking, the development of erhu music in China over the past twenty years has been growing fast and steadily. More and more children are learning to play erhu, and of course more amateurs. The problem is that many contemporary erhu performers, i.e. the newer post-Cultural Revolution generation, are “nowhere — neither East nor West.” At the same time that they try to imitate performers from the West, they fail to master what is most Orientally attractive and original about their own culture and tradition. There is a fashion of blindly worshipping the Occident among the young generation, to the extent that they are better at imitating or learning Western artistic expressions than mastering, fine-tuning or learning what belongs to themselves. Piano is a good example.

Erhu music in contemporary Chinese society is threatened by the fact that erhu concerts do not sell in the mainstream culture. Like guzheng (Chinese zither), for instance, it is considered an elite art. Art tastes in the contemporary Chinese society are pretty commercialized. What sells most is popular music by television singers or pop stars.

Guo Gan performing with Fiona Sze-Lorrain at UNESCO
(Paris, France, June 2010)
COURTESY OF REGARDS AILLEURS

In the world at large, there are now, of course, more professional erhu players spread across the globe. But not all of them persevere in their erhu careers. Many of them, after having led professional careers as musicians in China, opt to do something else once they move abroad. There are many reasons why. Some of them want to earn money, have family obligations, marry and have children, etc. There are at five or six erhu professional players in Paris, for example. Most of them play once in a while for festive celebrations in the Chinese community, just for fun, but they do not venture beyond that. They have their day-jobs, or other careers. Overall, there are now more opportunities for Westerners to appreciate erhu music, but erhu solo concerts are still relatively limited, and real, good erhu players at the concert level with a good understanding of world cultures and sensibilities are hard to come by. While more Chinese are learning to play the erhu, it is not the case for Westerners, who maintain their enthusiasm for this instrument at the level of appreciation. Unlike the Chinese, the Westerners resist imitating others. Therefore, it is still rather rare that Westerners pick up the instrument and play it, let alone perform it. Besides, audiences do not wish to see a non-Chinese playing a Chinese instrument. There is a stigma somehow. They want the “complete image” of a Chinese playing a Chinese instrument. Everyone easily knows who Beethoven or Schubert is, but no one knows in the Western society (or the Chinese society, for that matters) who the erhu masters are, for example. Perhaps even less than 1% really know who they really are, after all.