Music for Violin and Piano, Vol. 1

From high to low, east to west, my musical journey has been a remarkable roller-coaster ride. In the best of times, concert performances have taken me to many countries around the world: from Beijing Concert Hall to Carnegie Hall, from the Turpan Basin in China, 154 metres below sea level, to the highest capital in the world, La Paz, Bolivia, at 3,567 metres above. As a young artist, I played many times for China 's leaders including Premier Zhou En-lai, President Deng Xiao-ping and President Liu Shao-qi, and at the age of eleven first appeared on television.

In the worst times - throughout my teens that is - my musical training was interrupted by years of re-education: working in rice paddies, building roads, cleaning pigpens with waste up to my knees, hauling cow manure, carrying heavy sacks on my shoulders, sleeping next to hens in the rural Chinese countryside. Along with the instruments of other conservatory students, my violin was locked up in a storage closet by the "authorities" of the Cultural Revolution.

At the age of nine I had the honour to play for Ma Sicong, the most distinguished and best-known violinist in China. I have heard him play some of the very pieces I recorded on this CD. These happy memories, however, are juxtaposed in my mind with a terrifying image of Mr. Ma being physically abused by the Red Guards in front of a crowd of conservatory students and teachers a few years later during the Cultural Revolution. As staying in China was no longer an option, Ma and his family settled in the United States in the late 1960s. From then until the end of his life, never to return to China, Ma turned his energy to composition. In order better to capture the expression of Ma's musical soul, etched onto the pages of his music, I have often incorporated an 'erhu-style' sound to mimic Chinese folk music.

Although Ma and I were born in different eras, both of which contained much adversity for those following artistic journeys, in the end, both of us still share a profound love for our motherland. Every note in his music resonates deeply in my heart, and I hope that any listener will share my affection for one of the oldest and richest cultures in the world.

Hsiao-Mei Ku