On today’s date in 2012, the Minneapolis Guitar Quartet — an ensemble committed to commissioning original works as well as performing new arrangements for four guitars — gave the premiere performance of a suite that took them far afield: to Guangxi province in China, to be exact. The new work, Guangxi Impression, took place at Sundin Hall in St. Paul, but the sounds the four guitarists produced evoked not only a far-off Chinese landscape, but Chinese instruments, as well.
That should not have been all that surprising, since the composer of the specially commissioned piece, Gao Hong, is a virtuoso performer on one of them: the pipa, the traditional pear-shaped, plucked lute of China. Hong has made the United States her home since 1994, and her Guangxi Impressions for a quartet of traditional Western guitars is a suite in three movements, played without pause. The third and final movement is titled ‘Celebrating the Harvest.’
“A bountiful harvest is cause for celebration in Guangxi,” Hong writes, “and I depict this with sounds of percussion bands and people yelling with excitement as they dance. Near the end of the movement I [ask the performers to shout Chinese] words expressing happiness.”
Gao Hong (b. 1964): 'Celebrating the Harvest,' from 'Guangxi Impression'; Minneapolis Guitar Quartet; innova 858