Tekening

The title Tekening is Dutch for drawing, as in a pencil or charcoal drawing.
I felt the need to explore the erhu on its own, as I am in the process of writing several larger works for it in combination with other instruments (Farewell Songs and The Grey Tree).  As such, this piece is a sketch, or a drawing.  Think of a painter creating charcoal drawings of figures they will use later in an (oil) painting of fresco.
Tekening is a short 3-minute piece, where I use a motive that consists of the intervals of a second and a fifth.  Like in a sketch, this motive is then presented, or ‘drawn’, in different poses and characteristics: at the beginning slow and melodic; in the middle dance-like and more rhythmical becoming more and more virtuosic; and towards the end slow again, like the beginning, but now transformed through the use of tremolos and harmonics.
I have given my own interpretation to ornaments typically associated with traditional erhu performance, such as glissando grace notes, but have also used western bowed-string techniques.  The piece seamlessly moves back and forth between pentatonic, whole-tone, and chromatic scales.

Tekening is a freely composed melodic line for erhu, like a line supply drawn with a pencil or pen, utilising the free-flowing character of the instrument.