Sydney Opera House, Concert Hall
May 6, 2018

Tales of the Silk Road is subtitled A Concert of Chinese Plucked Instruments and Percussion. Presented by Ausfeng, it features the Australian premiere of distinguished Pipa virtuoso Zhang Hong-yan and the Plucked String Orchestra of the Central Conservatorium of Music from China.

At the heart of the concert is Zhang who is known around the world for her extraordinary expressiveness on the Pipa – a four-stringed Chinese lute with a pear-shaped wooden body, which has a 2000-year history. Here, Zhang is surrounded by various percussive instruments, and more than 20 other musicians (mostly female) on various Chinese stringed instruments including the Ruan and the Huqin (a tall, thin, two-stringed instrument like a little spike fiddle with a sound box at the bottom).

Zhang Hong-yan (centre) with Liu Xiaojing and Hu Yanlu in Spring of Tian Mountain. All photographs by Jiang Changgeng

Zhang has a reputation for exploring a new fusion between Eastern and Western music. In 2002, while she was touring the Uygurs in Inner and Central Asia, she discovered mural art grottoes with pictures of the Pipa and drum playing together. Rarely seen in...