Customer Reviews

Eleven Centuries Of Traditional Chinese Music

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've had the vinyl version of this for years. Unlike most of the recordings of Chinese music that I have heard this shows no Western influence whatsoever. At times the music approaches the sparse textures more commonly associated with Japanese art music. Features excellent recordings made by John Levy in the sixties, and the sleeve notes (with the lp version at least) explain all the tracks.
Beautiful sounds, and probably an important ethnomusicalogical document.

Traditional instruments, historical recordings. "Some Ways of Touching the Ch'in" is a demonstration of zither technique. The brief liner notes mention that the final track is a piece for orchestra with solo for small oboe; well, "orchestra" in this sense is the Chinese version with percussion and stringed intruments -- I think of the accompaniment to the puppet show in the movie "To Live". The pipa is featured on several tracks, such as "Ambush". Soloists and the name of each instrument featured are listed for each track. This great CD is an hour in length.

Stark. Discordant. Primitive. Traditional Chinese. Beautiful poetry of sound. The history of the Chinese culture and the sounds of ancient instruments are on display here.

FOR ANYONE WHO IS A MUSIC LOVR OF ALL CULTURES, THIS IS ANOTHER WONDERFUL CD. THE EXPLANTIONS OF THE DIFFERENT MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS AND THE HISTORY BEHIND THE MUSIC IS JUST WONDERFUL AND ENLIGHTENING.

I am not fully familiar with traditional music from China other then what you hear on movies. This album to me was more of a learning about the various instruments and their sounds than music to relax too. It has a beauty of its own - just not what I was expecting.

one very good track, wild geese decending played on the zheng zither, the rest are pretty worthless unless you dont have any other chinese traditional!!! the sound/mastering is poor to shocking, many tracks seem to have been recorded from a rather poor condition lp, the tracks which seem to come from tape have some kind of noise at varying amounts.
There are not enough chinese tradtional cd widely available for my liking (half of my best stuff from china has come from tapes direct from china which i did noise reduction job on) but there are a fair number totally superior to this cobbled together effort. try 'china the middle kingdom' on air mail music for a very good starter at a bargain price, maybe try the ancient art music of china on lyrichord label, by lily yuan, playing yanggqin, sound is first rate.
So i will record wild geese and the cd can do up for resale, the people giving five stars must be totally unaware of other cds which are vastly superior or they are friends of the label, do not waste your money.

If you are looking for the soothing sounds of the East to help you focus your Qi... I would recommend this.

I bought this disc many years ago out of curiosity and it became one of my favorites.

It is so boring that I listened to it for only one time, and after that I don't have any desire to play it again anymore. Especially the one called "Some Ways Of Touching The Ch'in", even though I have been speaking chinese all of my life, believe me, I couldn't understand what the lady was demonstrating. I am so glad that I wasn't born in China during the 11th century.