Exquisite Oriental Wash Painting - Traditional Chinese Artwork for Home Decor & Wall Art | Perfect for Living Room, Office & Gift Giving

James V. Maiello, Fanfare MagazineChang Ping (b. 1972) has enjoyed a highly successful career as a composer and academic in China, receiving a noteworthy collection of accolades, fellowships, and other awards from the Chinese Ministry of Education and the Central Conservatory of Music, where he serves as a professor of composition. Oriental Wash Painting is a suite of four concertos for traditional Chinese instruments accompanied by a Western-style symphony orchestra; all of the soloists also serve on the faculty of the Central Conservatory. Although this might seem like an incongruous mix of instruments, the combination of is effective in creating cinematic soundscapes and novel timbres.The first concerto in the set, The Wind Washed Clouds, features the guzheng, a 21-string Chinese zither tuned in a pentatonic scale. Ji Wei is an impressive soloist, and the orchestra paints a series of vivid images with enthusiasm and precision. The second concerto trades guzheng for ehru, a two-stringed spike fiddle, as a solo instrument. Nonetheless, it is cast in the same model as the first, with colorful orchestral sections alternating with solo episodes that highlight a traditional Chinese instrument. Soloist Yu Hongmei is musically expressive and technically dazzling. The pipa is similar to a lute, with a pear-shaped body and frets, and the focus of the third concerto, The Movement of Wash Painting. Given how quiet a Western lute is, the recording must be dependent on microphones to make the pipa heard over such a large orchestra. Like the other movements, the harmonic and formal framework is a predominantly Western one, and the soloist is a consummate expert. The set concludes with Blue Lotus, a concerto that features the zhudi, a bamboo flute. The music pushes a number of technical boundaries for the instrument, and soloist Yuan Feifan is more than up to the task.Taken as a set, Oriental Wash Painting showcases traditional Chinese instruments for Western audiences using a familiar musical language and a standard Western orchestra. Indeed, the whole project seems tailored toward popularizing these instruments and promoting traditional Chinese musical culture for a broader audience. The playing is consistent, polished, and expressive; the soloists are unfailingly virtuosic. For me, it is a reminder of China’s complex relationship with Western art music. Despite a fine recording, there is something deeply uncomfortable about the “product.” All of the principal performers are clearly government-approved, occupying prominent positions in the state’s primary institution for music education. The liner notes are thinly veiled propaganda, especially in lionizing the soloists and their many official titles and positions of power in the Chinese musical establishment. Listeners will certainly recognize what’s going on here with the program and the recording, but these also stand out as excellent performances.