Truth, fantasy, boldness and delicacy. Listening to Chinese classical guitarist Xuefei Yang’s latest album is like watching a parade of exquisitely rendered beasts on a silk handscroll. ‘Sketches of China’ (a nod to Miles Davis?) features Chinese classical, folk and modern music from the Han Dynasty to today in orchestral, chamber and solo arrangements, transcriptions or original compositions. Some are the result of commissions; others are by Xuefei herself; all are brought together by ‘a desire to share more of my own culture with audiences around the world’.

On two tracks – the opening A Lovely Rose and Dreams of Gulangyu Island – Xuefei is accompanied by the Xiamen Philharmonic Orchestra under Renchang Fu, who also arranged the former and composed the latter work. In a handful of others, she is joined by masters Weiliang Zhang on xiao (a variety of flute) and Sha Yuan on guzheng (plucked zither). Yet while the majority of the pieces are performed on solo guitar, Xuefei possesses an imagination as fluid and expansive as her technique. Such that Xuefei’s improvised cadenzas in A Lovely Rose capture much of the orchestra’s colour and sonority. And the haunting Hujia (with xiao) and nostalgia-drenched Everlasting Longing (with guzheng) find their echoes in White Snow in the Spring Sunlight, The Moon Represents My Heart and even Tan Dun’s Seven Desires.

This despite the all-pervasive spirit of the pipa, which informs Xuefei’s near-total mastery of her own instrument. If this gorgeous recording finds its ideal pictorial analogue in a painted scroll, Xuefei Yang’s playing can best be compared to the spontaneity and control of a master calligrapher.