Listen to this articleThousands of horses gallop on the two strings
Overview
Chinese Name: 赛马
English Name: Sai Ma, Horse Racing
Composer: Huang Haihuai 黄海怀
Horse Racing is an Erhu solo composed by Huang Haihuai. The music is deeply loved by people for its majestic momentum, warm atmosphere, and unrestrained melody. Whether the proud Racers or galloping horses, they are vividly displayed by the melody of Erhu.
Story of Horse Racing
Among many excellent Erhu works in modern times, “Horse Racing” is quite representative or the most widely spread repertoire. Since its publication, this work has been a must for Erhu performers, and it is also a reserved track for performers in concerts. It has flourished for decades.
Horse racing was created and played by Huang Haihuai, a young teacher of Hubei Academy of Art (the predecessor of Wuhan Conservatory of Music) from 1959 to 1961. After repeated performance practice, many modifications and improvements, he was selected to participate in the “Yangcheng flower fair” on behalf of Hubei Province in 1962, which was a success for the first time, valued by the national music industry and loved by the public. Huang Haihuai also showed his head from then on.
In 1963, Huang Haihuai once again represented Hubei Province in the fourth “Shanghai Spring” national erhu competition. His performance of horse racing not only won the unanimous praise and good evaluation of the judges, but also won the third prize for performance and the award for excellent new works. In the simultaneous competition, the erhu solo “river water” adapted by Huang Haihuai was performed by his student Wu Suhua, and the competition was also a great success.
Since then, these two works have been recorded as dense print records respectively – in that year, only works that marked the highest achievement of new China’s music works can be treated as recorded records. The following year, the publication of “Ten Erhu Tunes – A Selection of New Works of the Fourth” Spring of Shanghai “National Erhu Competition” (Shanghai Culture Publishing House) made the score of this well-known erhu song popular all over the country, and the score and records were in short supply in Xinhua bookstores all over the country.
Huang Haihuai, a young and vigorous man, devoted all his energy to teaching, creation and performance. He was also enthusiastic about compiling erhu teaching materials and humbly sought advice from erhu performers and predecessors. This young, talented and promising musician, whose artistic ideal was interrupted due to the outbreak of the “Cultural Revolution”, died in February 1967 at the age of 32 after suffering inhuman destruction.
