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Huang Haihuai
Erhu player, composer and teacher from Pingxiang, Jiangxi, who wrote the erhu showpiece Horse Racing in 1959 and adapted Jiang He Shui for solo erhu.
On a flat rock above a waterfall, a seven-string zither and a bamboo flute lie on a spread of blue-green cloth; beyond, a waterfall pours into a churning teal pool among misty peaks, with pine branches arching at the top left.
Huang Haihuai was born in Pingxiang, Jiangxi, in 1935. Self-taught on the erhu as a boy, he was already deputy leader and instructor of his hometown amateur troupe while at middle school. At twenty he entered the Central South Music School, studied with Zhou Hualin, and stayed on to teach after graduating in 1958. In 1959 he wrote the erhu solo Horse Racing, whose rapid bowing and plucked passages evoke a grassland horse race; it became one of the most played erhu pieces. In the early 1960s he adapted the guanzi piece Jiang He Shui for erhu, widening the instrument's vibrato and slide techniques. He died in 1967, aged thirty-two.
Life and times
Dates 1935–1967