Hong Kong’s guqin masters Lau Chor-wah and Sou Si-tai made their Shanghai debut, presenting a guqin concert at Shanghai Oriental Art Center on Sunday evening.
Playing guqin, an ancient Chinese musical instrument with seven strings, was considered an essential skill for educated elite in olden times. In 2008, the instrument was added to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO.
Ti Gong
Guqin artists from China’s Hong Kong have played an important role in keeping the musical tradition alive and reviving the old instrument with new works.
Both Lau and Sou are students of Hong Kong’s guqin maestro Tsar The-yun, who passed away in 2007 at the age of 102.
The news of the two performers’ Shanghai debut drew a rousing response from local guqin lovers. All the tickets were sold out within a week.
Ti Gong
Guqin master Lau Chor-wah
In addition to being a guqin instructor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Sou also frequently participates in planning guqin cultural exhibitions and has given exchange performances in the United States, Japan and some European countries.
Lau learned guqin from master Tsar for more than 30 years. The broadening of her learning horizons has enabled her to develop a pure and elegant style, which is at the same time poetic, and interesting.
Ti Gong
The guqins used in the Shanghai concert are extremely collectible items.
The three guqins used in the Shanghai concert are all extremely collectible items.
One of them is named after Shi Kuang, a blind artist in ancient China’s Spring and Autumn period (770 BC–476 BC) renowned for his good hearing and skills of playing guqin. It was made in the Tang Dynasty (618 AD–907 AD). Previously collected in Hong Kong, it is now owned by Juneyao Health Public Guqin Hall in Shanghai’s Pudong New Area.