Yue Ye (moon night) 月夜

Note: this post has a lot of dead links which have to be up-dated.

Yue Ye (moon night, Yuè Yè 月夜) is a composition for the erhu by Liu Tianhua (Liú Tiānhuá 刘天华). The date given on the score is 1924, I assume this is the year of publication.

Here are 4 different recording of the piece. All are erhu only, which I prefer. It seems many if not most recordings have accompiment, ranging from just with yangqin to a small ensemble to the large modern Chinese orchestra.

Wang Yijie
Link, 7.2MB
This is my favourite of these four. The erhu tone is big, rich and full-bodied.

Liu Changfu 刘长福
Link, 5MB
This one is more reflective, less intense, with a sweeter and gently beautiful tone.

Xu Ke
Link, 8MB
The first thing that strikes me about this recording is that the player is playing the piece like a violin player.

Wang Guotong
Link, 9.8MB
This recording is noticeably slower than the other ones here. The erhu is tuned one semitone lower than the standard tuning (assuming A = 440hz), to D flat and A flat. So I wonder if it has been slowed down. All the other tracks on the CD this recording is from have the same open string tuning.

Zhang Rui
Link, 6.2MB
This is from a 1982 cassette released by the China Records Company(HL 113).