Classical Sessions: Chang Jing

Chang Jing has never liked to define herself as just a guzheng performer. Rather, she uses the guzheng, a type of Chinese plucked zither, as a medium for exploring the limitless possibilities of music, art, and beauty. With a raft of cross-genre classics to her name, she has crafted a Classical Session with an intriguing theme: Dialogue with Debussy. “I’d like to thank Apple Music for posing a tough problem,” says Chang, “performing Western classical music on the guzheng. This was a great creative opportunity—and I immediately decided on Debussy. The first time I heard Debussy’s music, I felt like he must have been Chinese in a previous life, with the astute dreaminess of those notes, full of eastern poetry and Chinese imagery.” Eastern elements have long been one of the most talked-about characteristics of Debussy’s music. To Chang, although Debussy never came to China, “he may genuinely have visited China in his dreams.” Blending the guzheng and Debussy required careful thought about which pieces and arrangements to play, as well as how to perform them. Chang ultimately chose three classics—“Rêverie,” “Clair de lune,” and “Reflets dans l’eau”—and incorporated her own responses to Debussy’s melodies in her playing, merging structural rigor with improvisation and a natural sense of light, color and image. “The sound of the guzheng is inherently poetic. When I let my fingertips follow my heart, all of that beauty unfurls before me, letting the notes return to the East in their own way,” she says. She hopes that if Debussy were to hear her performing these three pieces, he would say, “Yes, this is just what I’m looking for.” The final half of her second piece, a response to “Clair de lune,” is one of her favorite sections. She points out the benefit of listening in Dolby Atmos: “You can hear the delicately sparkling sky and water, and the falling moonlight as if you’re actually there—the mood is described in a line of poetry by the Tang poet Zhang Ruoxu: ‘When did the moon first shine on someone on the river?’”