Erhu Repertoire

The erhu is a two-stringed Chinese bowed instrument with a small resonator covered in python skin, played with the bow hair passed between the strings rather than against them. The result is a tone close to the human voice, with a wide expressive range — heavy vibrato, sliding portamento between notes, sharp dynamic contrast. The instrument has no fingerboard; the player stops the strings against the air, giving microtonal pitch flexibility. The solo repertoire ranges from short folk-derived character pieces to multi-movement concertos with western orchestra. The most-played twentieth-century works adapt or imitate the vocal style of Chinese opera and folk song.

The erhu's ancestors trace to the Tang dynasty (seventh-tenth centuries), but the modern solo concert tradition was largely built by the blind street musician Hua Yanjun ('Abing,' 1893-1950) and the conservatory-trained reformer Liu Tianhua (1895-1932). Abing's 'Erquan Yingyue' ('The Moon Reflected in the Second Spring,' 1950) — recorded just months before his death by a Central Conservatory team in his hometown Wuxi — became the single most-played erhu piece. Liu Tianhua wrote ten compositions and ten exercises that standardized the modern solo technique. The conservatory system after 1949 produced generations of virtuosos (Min Huifen, Wang Guotong, George Gao) and expanded the repertoire toward concerto-scale works.

Listen for the slides: erhu phrasing depends on portamento (gliding between notes) more than on clean note attacks. The bow's pressure shifts within a single sustained note, producing dynamic swells inside what western strings would treat as a static pitch. Vibrato is heavier and slower than on western violin, often used to color a held note rather than to mark every note.

Hua Yanjun's 'Erquan Yingyue' (1950), in any major recording — Min Huifen's or Wang Guotong's interpretations are the canonical reference points. For a concerto-scale entry, the 'Liang Zhu' (Butterfly Lovers) Concerto arranged for erhu and orchestra.

Hua Yanjun, blind from childhood, played erhu and pipa on the streets of Wuxi for income for decades before the 1950 recording sessions that captured 'Erquan Yingyue.' The piece had no fixed score before that session — what is now performed worldwide is essentially a single late-life performance transcribed.