This lovely and brilliant chamber work by a veteran Chinese film music composer seems well calculated to appeal to both Chinese and Western audiences. Based on Western Chinese folk music, this composition illustrates the continuing vitality of the form Franz Liszt used in his Hungarian Rhapsodies. Zhao Jiping was born in 1945 in Hebei, a northern Chinese interior province that includes Beijing. He has scored numerous important Chinese films, including Raise the Red Lantern, My Concubine, Temptress Moon, The Emperor and the Assassin, and Ju Dou. His music, including his concert works, often draws on the traditional culture of northwest China. Moon Over Guan Mountains is an 11-movement chamber composition in two connected main sections, slow and fast, with a slow epilogue. It is scored for a Western cello, the Chinese instruments the pip'a (lute) and the sheng (a form of mouth organ), and the typical Indian paired drums called the tabla. The Liszt formula of a slow, quasi-improvisatory opening section followed by a fast, dance-like and exciting concluding section works very well in this context. The three melody instruments successively embroider a folk-like theme, but sometimes come together to make Western-style harmonic combinations. Even when the texture is purely melodic, there are modulations (shifts of main key note) that are essentially Western in origin. It is would not be very far wrong at all to say that this is Chinese music that borrows some Westernisms, more than it is the reverse. At times, this opening section is improvisatory and unmeasured in effect; other times it is measured and even includes arpeggiated accompaniment in the cello that create a Debussyian impressionistic effect. A faster rhythmic pattern on the pip'a begins the more rhythmic section of the work. As if to make up for its absence to this point, the tabla player enters with an extended drum solo. This leads to a dance melody in triple time for the pipa, with the cello accompanying with rhythmic pizzicato figures and the sheng outlining the main melody notes. Again, the method of building up the music is dramatic in a way borrowed from European music. The music becomes more insistent and virtuosic for all instruments until reaching a piercing chord, then resumes with an effective near-repetition of this section. It fades out to the tabla, solo again, which falters and breaks its rhythm, then slows the tempo down for a brief epilogue, a nocturnal reminiscence of the sounds and basic mood of the opening, with the addition of an expressive solo for the cello.

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