Liang on the Ku-Cheng

The ku-cheng (a 16-stringed zither) that he played was as old as China's Great Wall. In Manhattan's China House last week, a Yale student named Liang Tsai-ping played centuries-old music on a ku-cheng that had come down to him through three generations. His selections (from long-forgotten composers)--Flowers on the Variegated Brocade, Winter Birds Sporting over the Stream--were no more difficult to tell apart than Debussy's impressions.

With a faint, abstracted smile, like a man trying to remember his first girl, Liang plucked out clear notes with the fingernails of his right hand; made them whine and sob with his left. Those who gave up listening for familiar chords (and trying to ignore the weird half tones which almost invariably followed) were rewarded with a dreamy sense of Confucius' "peace among the people."

In mid-program, as a sop to Occidentals, a Chinese pianist played Chopin. By contrast, Chopin's music sounded anxious, hurried, and too full of sound.

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