KLASSIKOM=Innovations in classical music

Qin Wenchen, professor and deputy dean of the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, has been awarded the Special Prize for International Cultural Engagement at the Austrian Music Theatre Prize (Österreichischer Musiktheaterpreis), presented on 8 September 2026 at the Votivkirche in Vienna.The neo-Gothic church on the Ringstraße, one of Vienna’s most recognisable landmarks, served as the ceremonial backdrop for the 14th edition of the prize, with guests from politics, culture, and the media gathered in what press accounts described as its monumental, sacral atmosphere. Winners received a statuette created by the Austrian ceramics house Gmundner Keramik, taking the form of a feather combined with a panpipe of seven pipes — an allusion to Mozart’s Magic Flute — with each piece individually fired to ensure its uniqueness.Founded in 2013, the Austrian Music Theatre Prize is an annual award presented by a jury of eleven Austrian and German music journalists and critics, with co-chairs Heinz Sichrovsky of ORF and Joachim Leitner of the Tiroler Tageszeitung, alongside members from publications including Der Standard, Die Presse, Kronen Zeitung, Kurier, and Deutschlandradio. The prize covers opera, operetta, musical, dance, and contemporary music theatre, with categories ranging from individual performance awards to production prizes and special recognitions.Qin’s award falls under a special category presented in association with the Confucius Institute, recognising individuals or institutions whose work bridges cultures through music. Previous Asian recipients under related categories include conductor Pang Ka-pang, who received the Special Award for International Music and Cultural Engagement in 2021; the Suzhou Chinese Orchestra, which received the Special Award for International Orchestra the same year; the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, which received the Special Award for International Cultural Programme in 2023; and Claudia Yang, who received the Special Prize for International Cultural Engagement in 2020.The 2026 ceremony also honoured soprano Anja Silja with a Lifetime Achievement award, Markus Hinterhäuser with the Grand Prix of the Jury, baritone Leo Nucci with a Special International Award, and soprano Asmik Gregorian for best female leading role in Bellini’s Norma at the Theater an der Wien.Qin’s award came during a broader Vienna visit marking the 55th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and Austria. On 10 September, two days after the ceremony, he appeared at the MuTh concert hall in Vienna for an evening co-organised by International Culture Cooperations, the Confucius Institute at the University of Vienna, and SONATA Book Verlag, supported by the Central Conservatory of Music and the SICHTweisen Festival. The event combined a concert of his chamber works, performed by five musicians from the Central Conservatory on pipa, zheng, piano, cello, and bamboo flute, with a presentation of a newly published book on his life, written by Yuan Mei and titled Selbst zu den höchsten Wolken führt eine Leiter (Even to the Highest Clouds a Ladder Leads). The book recounts Qin’s childhood in sixty episodes. Guests included mdw Rector Ulrike Sych and the Kenyan ambassador to Austria, Valerie Rugene.Qin Wenchen was born in 1966 in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, where he began studying Chinese folk music as a child. He studied composition with Xu Shuya and Zhu Jianer at the Shanghai Conservatory from 1987, and after graduating in 1992, began teaching at the Central Conservatory in Beijing. A DAAD scholarship enabled him to study with Nicolaus A. Huber, and he received his diploma with distinction from the Folkwang Hochschule Essen in 2001, after which he returned to Beijing. He is currently professor of the composition department and and deputy dean at the Central Conservatory and a distinguished professor at the China Conservatory of Music.His works have been performed by more than seventy ensembles internationally, including the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Ensemble Recherche, the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, the St Petersburg Philharmonic, and the Helsinki Philharmonic. Major works include Lonely Song for strings (1990), Yi Yun for orchestra (1991), Drumming in the Cold (1996), Wind-Moon Consonance for sheng, recorder and orchestra (2004), Nature’s Dialogue for orchestra and audio tape (2010), Across the Skies for pipa and strings (2012), Echoes from the Other Shore for zheng and orchestra (2015), Seeking Sound for orchestra (2018), and Poetry of the Land for zheng, sheng and orchestra (2020). His works are published by Boosey and Hawkes / Sikorski. Qin turned 60 this year. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

Yan Huichang, one of the most prominent figures in Chinese orchestral music, conducted the world premiere of his Xianqiang Rhapsody at Xi’an Concert Hall Tuesday evening, with the Shaanxi Broadcasting National Traditional Orchestra and a one-man-band featuring 25-year-old Xianqiang virtuoso Wang Kun performing under the composer’s baton.The programme and the Orchestra’s commission is funded by the China National Arts Fund (CNAF).The work is a five-movement full-length suite drawing on Xianqiang, the string puppet theatre tradition native to Heyang county of Shaanxi province, incorporating its characteristic percussion and string idioms. Xianqiang takes its name from the form itself: xian meaning string, qiang the incidental music that accompanies the theatre.The premiere carries personal weight for Yan, who was born in Heyang county of Shaanxi, a region long associated with some of China’s most distinctive theatre genres and folk traditions. Contributing a major orchestral work to his hometown has been a longstanding ambition, and the result — built around a tradition he grew up with — represents the fulfilment of that goal.Yan Huichang is best known internationally as longtime artistic director and chief conductor of the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, a post he has held since 1997 and through which he has been among the most consistent advocates for Chinese orchestral music on the world stage.A seminar was held the following morning participated by leading scholars and composers weighing in on the suite, an internal review and evaluation protocol. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

Shanghai Opera House opens its 26/27 season with a gala at the Shanghai Concert Hall conducted by Zhang Liang.The gala features tenors Shi Yijie and Wang Hongwei, sopranos Huang Ying and Wu Lie'ri, as well as soloists from the house.Shanghai Concert HallSeptember 5, 2026 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

She was the most celebrated actress of Republican-era China, and she died at 24 with a note that read: “Gossip is a fearful thing.” Ninety years after Ruan Lingyu’s death, she remains an irresistible subject, for filmmakers, for biographers, and now, for a new generation of composer.Ruan Lingyu, a chamber opera composed by Li Zi’ao with a libretto by Li Xuanru — both Gen Zs — arrived at the West Bund Grand Theatre in Shanghai on 28 August, following its 2025 premiere in Beijing, and offered a portrait of the actress that was as psychologically probing as it was musically assured.Ruan Lingyu’s story is inseparable from the men who defined and destroyed her. Born in 1910 in Shanghai to a working-class family, she entered the film industry as a teenager and rose swiftly to become the pre-eminent screen presence of her era, a Chinese equivalent of Greta Garbo in emotional range and magnetic intensity. She starred in landmark silent films including Little Toys, The Goddess, and New Women, often playing characters trapped by social convention, poverty, or male exploitation — roles that mirrored her own circumstances with uncomfortable precision.Her private life was a catalogue of misfortune. Her first partner, Zhang Damin, a chronic gambler whom she supported financially for years, sued her for adultery when she left him for the tea merchant Tang Jishan. Tang, equally controlling and unfaithful, dragged her into a public legal dispute that the Shanghai tabloids seized upon with gleeful savagery. The press, which had built her into an icon, now dismantled her with the same energy. On 7 March 1935, the eve of International Women’s Day, she took an overdose of barbiturates. She was 24. Lu Xun, in his eulogy, wrote that it was not Ruan Lingyu who killed herself, but the society that consumed her.The production at West Bund’s black-box Square Theatre offered a stark contrast to the commercial bustle of the surrounding complex. The lobby was dim and airless, security desks unmanned, the building feeling more afterthought than destination. Inside the intimate space, however, a spare stage and an atmosphere of quiet tension announced that the evening meant business.Performed without interval, the opera takes two interlocking threads as its backbone: Ruan Lingyu’s relationships with three men, and her most significant film roles. The structure is tight and the psychology detailed, tracing how a woman who embodied suffering on screen was gradually consumed by it offstage. Four young singers carry the piece, with soprano, tenor, and baritone voices distributed with care across solo arias, monologues, duets, and a quartet that each find their own character. The gender geometry — one woman against three men — recalls the inverse configuration of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, in which one male protagonist is pursued and ultimately judged by three women. Here the dynamic is reversed, and the weight of that reversal is the opera’s central argument.Li Zi’ao’s score is the production’s most distinctive achievement. The libretto’s slightly schematic, stream-of-consciousness structure gives the composer room to move freely, and he uses it well. The music is immediately accessible, at times closer to musical theatre than classical opera, but the Republican-era sonic palette — dance-hall rhythms, pentatonic inflections, the ghost of Shikumen jazz — is woven in with subtlety rather than nostalgia. Character delineation follows knowable conventions: the villains are telegraphed, the heroine luminous and doomed. The orchestration occasionally overreaches, pressing harder than the drama requires. But the theatrical instinct is sound, and the dramatic momentum rarely falters.Ruan Lingyu joins a growing body of work reclaiming Republican-era women for the contemporary stage. Lin Huiyin and Zhang Ailing have both received musical theatre treatments in recent years; that Ruan Lingyu now joins them, in a form that takes her psychological complexity seriously, feels overdue. That the work was conceived and written by two Gen Zs makes it more striking still.Pre- and post-show talks, a format more common in a repertory theatre than opera, added welcome context. The audience, modest in number but attentive in spirit, seemed grateful for both. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

She admits it freely, without embarrassment: she was super nervous. Not the polite, performative anxiety that competition pianists sometimes confess to in interviews, but the real thing, the kind that drains sound from your fingers and leaves you playing in a kind of internal silence. Anqi, a French-Taiwanese pianist competing in the 2023 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, was giving herself no illusions about where she stood. She knew she was not among the frontrunners. She knew she had not played the Chopin étude as well as she wanted to the day before. And she knew, as everyone in that building knew, what was happening to the west of the country in which she was sitting.None of it, in the end, was enough to make her stay home.Q&ATang: Did you manage to do any sightseeing here?Anqi: Not really, because we’re in competition. It’s quite intense.Tang: How is your competition experience so far?Anqi: Well, I’m super nervous. Of course, everyone can see it. When I play, it’s like super nervous. But it’s a great experience to play in that hall. The acoustics are good, I think.Tang: Which piano did you choose?Anqi: Kawai, which is rarely chosen this time. Actually, it’s funny, because there are four pianos, and I had the Chopin étude, which I didn’t play very well the day before. I tried every piano on the opening of the Chopin étude, the chromatic one, and I found Kawai works the most with me. And after, I found it louder a bit, because when I’m nervous I usually just have no sound.Tang: Do you still feel nervous now?Anqi: No, not really, since I’ve finished.Tang: How did you travel to Moscow?Anqi: From Paris. We changed at Istanbul, Turkish Airlines. In total, without the layover, it’s about seven or eight hours. But the connection was four or five hours, and we arrived very late — we got our flight at eleven in the morning and were here at about one or two in the morning.Tang: Did you make any new friends here?Anqi: Some, yes. I have a roommate, and there is also a Russian I sometimes meet.Tang: You are competing on behalf of France, but I understand you are also Taiwanese. Are you the only Taiwanese competitor here?Anqi: As far as I can tell, yes. But I feel no real difference from the others. There is another French candidate, so I feel the same as him.Tang: Are you concerned about what is going on here, in the western part of Russia?Anqi: Yes, I know. Everyone knows it. But the Tchaikovsky Competition has always been a dream since I was young. And I know I’m not a very strong candidate — obviously I know I won’t win prizes and things like that — but I think it’s still a great experience to participate, and that’s why I still applied.Tang: Do your parents worry about you being here?Anqi: Well, my mother is actually here with me, so I think it’s fine.Tang: There are people who argue that by participating in this competition, you are in effect endorsing the Russian government. Do you agree with that?Anqi: Personally, I don’t really agree. I think a competition is always a competition. I know it’s state-sponsored, but I don’t think participating in a competition means we support the President of Russia. It’s a prestigious competition, and that’s the reason. Music first.Tang: About the repertoire — how much of it is prescribed and how much is your own choice?Anqi: In the first round, they give you a framework — you need a classical sonata, but you can choose whether it’s Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven or something else. You need a Chopin étude but you can choose which one. So basically everything is within a category: you need Bach, you need a classical sonata, you need three études, and you need Tchaikovsky. Everyone plays the same categories, but with their own choices within them.Tang: How do you feel about your performance so far?Anqi: Of course I don’t like it, since I didn’t play well. But it’s still a great experience to stand on that stage.Tang: How does this competition compare to others you’ve participated in?Anqi: I feel much more nervous with this one. I don’t know why — maybe because the hall is so big, and it’s one of the biggest competitions I’ve ever participated in. That makes me feel super nervous. And with Tchaikovsky up there above you, and all the other composers looking at you —Tang: They’re all watching you. And the audience — how do you find them?Anqi: They are kind. They clap. Very kind.Interviewed in June 2023 in Moscow. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

Episode TwoSong Qian arrived in Shanghai as a stranger. She had grown up in another city, and when she first walked the streets of the metropolis to buy something from a local shop, she found herself unable to follow the accent, unable to penetrate the particular pride that Shanghainese carry in their voices. The conservatory was famous, and getting in felt like an achievement. But belonging to the city was something else entirely, a process that took the better part of three years.She had not intended to be a mezzo-soprano. Before her entrance examination at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, her teacher had not trained her strictly as one voice type or another. She sang some soprano repertoire. But when the audition panel assembled for the final round, her voice — broad, wide in colour — read as mezzo to most of the judges. There was also the matter of timing. That year, mezzo applicants were scarce. The panel needed to balance its intake. And so it was decided.Song Qian received the news without much in the way of strong feeling. She was not sure of the difference, not really. Her main thought, she admits with some amusement, was that at least mezzos do not have to sing so high. High notes required daily drilling. This seemed, at the time, like a reasonable arrangement.The five years that followed were pleasant enough. She won scholarships, partly because she policed her dormitory with a ferocity that her classmates still remember — threatening anyone who left the room untidy with the loss of the communal grade-point average on which the scholarship depended. Her teachers were pleased with her. She ranked well among her peers. But looking back, she recognises that she did not yet understand what she was singing. The music and the soul, she says, had not yet collided.After graduating she joined the Shanghai Opera House, then as now her institutional home, though in those years it was taking on young singers only into the chorus. Her motivation was at least partly practical: that cohort of graduates was the last for whom a Shanghai work unit could sponsor a permanent household registration, the coveted hukou. She wanted to stay in the city she had finally come to love. The Opera House was the obvious answer. Being a mezzo helped. Sopranos lined up to audition every year. Mezzos of quality were always in shorter supply.The turn came a year into her posting, at one of the Opera House’s routine annual assessments. Sitting on the panel that day was Luan Feng, a celebrated bass who had spent more than two decades in Italy and had recently returned to China. He noticed a mezzo-soprano in the chorus. He asked to meet her. As it turned out, he had already seen her once before: she had attended a masterclass he gave at the conservatory during her fourth year, and her face had stayed with him without his quite knowing why.Luan Feng was taking a small group of singers to compete in Italy and invited Song Qian to join. She was the only one from Shanghai; three others came from Beijing, two tenors and a baritone. They travelled to Pavia, Mantua and Busseto. Both tenors reached the finals but won nothing. Song Qian won merit prizes at two competitions. Being the youngest competitor, she also received a special encouragement award at one of them. She had spent the weeks beforehand drilling her Italian rolled r every morning the moment she woke up, having been told in no uncertain terms by Luan Feng that without it she would not get far.After the competitions, Luan Feng was invited to give a concert at the Italian Embassy in Beijing. Song Qian performed. The Italian ambassador, watching her sing, turned to those around him and said this young woman should come to Italy to study. She had a future. He would give her a scholarship. She could not understand him — she spoke no Italian beyond ciao and buongiorno — and Luan translated after the fact. The scholarship turned out to be a joint arrangement between the Italian cultural ministry and the Chinese Ministry of Education, covering tuition, with a monthly stipend of 1,000 euros.Her father was not entirely happy. He was not worried about money. He was worried about safety, about distance, about a daughter beyond his reach in a foreign country. Her mother took the opposite view: the opportunity was there, she was young, she had to take it.The family talked it through. In the end they agreed she should go.She arrived in Milan on December 31, 2005. The next morning was New Year’s Day 2006. She enrolled as a visiting scholar at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory of Music, the institution the public exchange programme had designated. A year later, having fallen in love with the city, the buildings, the air, the sound of the language, the coffee, and the particular elegance of the way Italians carry themselves, she realised she had barely scratched the surface. She resigned from the Opera House, severed the practical ties that would otherwise have required her to keep paying into the Chinese social insurance system from abroad, and went back to Milan to sit the entrance examination for a full master’s degree.It was in that first year, buying student standing-room tickets at La Scala for about 15 euros a time — a fraction of tthe 100 or 200 euros a regular seat could cost — that something shifted in her understanding of what she was doing with her voice. She would queue at four or five in the afternoon for an eight o’clock curtain, collect her numbered ticket, and stand at the top of the house listening to singers whose sound she had never encountered anything like at home. The resources available to students in China at that time, she says, were simply not the same: fewer visiting artists, fewer concerts, little of the daily immersion in live opera that the Milan years gave her. Standing in that auditorium, she made herself a promise. If she could one day sing on a stage like that, even once, it would mean something.It was also during those years, not at the Shanghai Conservatory but at La Scala, that she began to understand what bel canto actually was. And it was in Italy, in the third year of her time there, that she stopped being a mezzo-soprano and became a soprano.To be continued…This is a Chinese language programme without subtitles. This is a public episode. 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Xu Leyi is 15, from Guiyang, and a flute major at the Secondary School Affiliated to the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. She was originally destined for piano until a stern teacher frightened her into switching instruments. A gentler flute teacher sealed the deal, and she has never looked back.This summer she spent nearly a month in the United States on her own, taking masterclasses at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester and at the home of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s principal flutist, who also teaches at Curtis and Juilliard.She watched Brazil versus Norway at the World Cup in New York, caught an Augustin Hadelich and Seong-Jin Cho recital at Ozawa Hall in Tanglewood after a rainstorm drove the lawn audience inside for free, and improvised a duet of the New World Symphony and Danny Boy with a Harvard mathematics professor she met at a roadside motel with a grand piano in the lobby.She is also a serious aviation enthusiast who has visited the cockpits of eleven international flights, sat in the pilot’s seat, and that glasses once ruled her out of a piloting career. Her ambition is to earn a private pilot’s licence alongside her music. She reckons that during cruise altitude, there ought to be time to sneak in a few notes on the flute.This is a Chinese language programme with bilingual subtitles.Filmed and interviewed in Shanghai on August 7, 2026. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

Jane Eyre the Musical was staged in Shanghai over the weekend at the AIA Grand Theatre.This is a Chinese language musical sung with pre-recorded music.Here're the encores. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

The third instalment of KLASSIKOM’s conversation with composer and postdoctoral researcher Ni Chenkang turns to two works that round out his shortlist of Chinese piano music capable of competing at the highest international level: Ye Xiaogang’s piano concerto Scent of Green Mango, and Ni’s own solo piece Night Fantasy.Ye Xiaogang’s Scent of Green Mango: Freshness as a Compositional PrincipleNi opens with a word that he returns to repeatedly when describing Ye Xiaogang’s music: fresh. Not fresh in the diminutive, decorative sense that the word sometimes carries in Chinese popular discourse, but fresh in a genuinely substantive musical sense. The quality is rooted in Ye’s approach to modulation. Working within pentatonic modes, Ye modulates with unusual speed, frequency and variety of colour, shifting between tonal centres in ways that are at once Chinese in material and wholly distinctive in character. Ni calls it pan-tonal, then adds that fresh and transcending the ordinary captures it more vividly for a general audience than any technical term could.Scent of Green Mango is a concerto, which places it in a different category from the solo works Ni recommended in the previous two sessions. A concerto means the final round, and Ni is direct about its fitness for that context. In scale, technical demand, expressive range and personal musical language, he considers it fully capable of standing alongside the standard final-round concertos, Liszt and the rest. The balance between piano and orchestra is, in his view, perfectly proportioned. The cadenza is present. Many of the textures share a recognisable kinship with Liszt and Chopin, but everything has been thoroughly absorbed into a Chinese and specifically Ye-esque idiom.The difficulty, Ni explains, lies precisely in that duality. A performer must command the Western harmonic transitions embedded in the work’s modulations while simultaneously inhabiting the Chinese modal sensibility that gives those modulations their particular colour and freshness. He describes the effect as watercolour: delicate, luminous, capable of extraordinary colour change. Getting that quality into the sound, rather than merely playing the notes correctly, is where the real challenge resides.A practical point follows. Both Ye Xiaogang and Zhang Zhao are published by Schott, which means their scores are commercially available outside China. For an international competitor or jury member, obtaining the music is straightforward.Ni Chenkang’s Night Fantasy: Silence, Eruption and the Sounds of ShanghaiWhen the conversation turns to younger composers, Ni is candid about the difficulty of the terrain. The volume of piano music being written by Chinese composers in their twenties, thirties and forties is enormous, largely unheard even by specialists, and very hard to promote. Rather than attempt a survey he cannot honestly make, he speaks to one of his own works.Night Fantasy runs to approximately eight minutes, long enough for a competition context, and Ni describes its technical demands as substantial. He adds, with evident self-awareness, that he would need a very long time to get it to the standard the work requires. A Russian professor has performed it. A pianist from the Shanghai Conservatory has played it. Neither, in Ni’s judgement, has yet fully realised what the piece demands.The work was composed during the period of Covid-19 lockdown, when physical confinement produced, paradoxically, a state of heightened mental activity. Night Fantasy is Ni’s attempt to give that contradiction a musical form: stillness on the surface, eruption underneath, a tipping point held in suspension. The folk sources woven into it are drawn from his immediate surroundings in Shanghai, principally Suzhou pingtan, the distinctive storytelling and musical tradition of the Yangtze Delta region, along with melodic fragments from the film scores of the old Shanghai Film Studio that he absorbed in childhood. Taking StockFour works have been recommended in this programme for major competition, three solo pieces and one concerto, by four composers spanning two generations. Chen Yi and Ye Xiaogang are in their seventies; Zhang Zhao is a senior figure of the preceding cohort; Ni Chenkang represents the generation that came after. The four works are Duo Ye, Nuoma Amei, Scent of Green Mango and Night Fantasy.The body of Chinese piano music is vast, almost certainly comparable in volume to the Western repertoire accumulated over centuries. What the conversation has offered is a first stone thrown, a few works selected from within the limits of two people’s knowledge and perspective. The question of which Chinese piano works deserve a place on the major competition stage or any world’s concert stage is one that the repertoire itself will ultimately answer. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

Soprano Song Qian is the prima donna of the Shanghai Opera House, singing titleroles in operas by Puccini, Richard Wagner and Carl Maria von Weber, to name but a few, as well as in symphonies by Beethoven and Mahler.In this first episode, she talks about her family in Panjin of Liaoning province, her first musical experience and years at high school in Weifang.An article based on the interview appeared on Modern Family Life magazine in April 2025, whose English highlight could be found here.This is a Chinese language programme without subtitles. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

The question sounds simple enough: which Chinese piano works are actually good enough to compete at the world’s top piano competitions, to stand alongside Liszt, Chopin and Tchaikovsky in front of an international jury that may never have encountered Chinese contemporary music before?Composer and postdoctoral researcher Ni Chenkang has a clear answer. Recorded at Parsons Music in Shanghai on August 8, his conversation with Rudolph Tang cuts through the noise and arrives at two works in particular, with a precise account of what makes them exceptional and why that exceptionalism travels across cultural borders.The Filtering ProblemChina produces a remarkable volume of new piano music every year, far more than most people realise. The vast majority disappears. What survives is a small fraction of the total, and within that fraction, the subset capable of entering a top international competition is smaller still.Ni identifies three criteria any such work must satisfy simultaneously. It must achieve sufficient compositional depth, musically and intellectually. Its technical demands must be comprehensive enough to give a competitor a genuine opportunity to show everything they can do. And the score must be obtainable abroad, a detail that tends to be overlooked but represents a hard prerequisite. Against these criteria, he proposes three works: Duo Ye by Chen Yi, Nuoma Amei by Zhang Zhao, and Scent of the Green Mango, Op. 42 by Ye Xiaogang. He stops short of calling them the absolute summit of Chinese piano writing, but places them firmly in that territory.Chen Yi’s Duo YeChen Yi drew on the music and dance of the Dong ethnic minority of southern China. The work operates on two levels. At the rhythmic level, its rapid and irregular metre changes bear a clear kinship with Stravinsky’s approach in Petrushka, itself a landmark of folk music absorbed into the concert hall. Like Petrushka, Duo Ye uses rhythmic instability not as decoration but as a structural principle, the engine that propels the whole. At the pitch level, Dong folk scales introduce a melodic character that reshapes the harmonic framework from within rather than sitting on top of it. The result, Ni argues, is a fusion in which the folk element and the pianistic element are genuinely inseparable.Technical fluency is only the entry point. Above it sit phrasing, structural understanding and musicality, each demanding progressively more. And underlying all of these is something that cannot be acquired through practice alone: an understanding of how the Dong dance actually moves. Without that embodied knowledge, a performer will produce the notes but not the feeling.Zhang Zhao’s Nuoma AmeiIf Duo Ye represents a breakthrough in rhythmic and melodic integration, Nuoma Amei addresses a deeper and more stubborn problem: the harmonic limitations of Chinese musical tradition.The pentatonic scale, which underlies so much Chinese music, is inherently consonant. It generates relatively little internal tension. Orchestration can compensate by differentiating timbres and registers, but the conflict this produces is weak. What music needs for genuine dramatic tension is sharpness at the intervallic level, and the pentatonic by nature does not supply it.The solution, Ni argues, lies in going deeper into Chinese tradition rather than away from it. Regional opera forms, with their seven-note scales and specialised modal inflections, carry exactly the dramatic charge that the pentatonic lacks. Qinqiang opera, for instance, distinguishes between a bitter tone and a joyful tone, colourings with real emotional weight. This is the nourishment composers must draw on to write music of genuine dramatic range.Zhang Zhao’s achievement in the opening of Nuoma Amei is, in Ni’s assessment, a perfect solution. Chinese modal sensibility and Western harmonic writing are fused in a way that feels neither forced nor decorative. The opening passage, where harmonic layers, heterophonic counterpoint, bass and melody proceed simultaneously with independent dynamic trajectories, represents a fusion fully achieved rather than merely attempted.The Universal MeasureIf these works appeared at an international competition before a jury with little prior exposure to Chinese music, would cultural unfamiliarity become an insurmountable barrier?Ni does not think so. The qualities that make these works exceptional are not culturally specific. They operate at a level any experienced musician can perceive. When four simultaneous voices are in play in the opening of Nuoma Amei, a pianist either brings out all of that layering in its full complexity or they do not. An experienced jury will hear the difference immediately, and that difference has nothing to do with whether the music sounds Chinese or Western. It has to do with the sophistication of the musical expression, which is universal.This, Ni suggests, is what the well-worn phrase about music knowing no borders actually means. The universality does not lie in the surface character of the sound. It lies in the level at which the music operates and the level at which it is performed. Whether that combination can move a jury encountering it for the first time remains, as he freely acknowledges, an open question. But the barrier, he insists, is not cultural. It is musical. And musical barriers can always be crossed.Interviewed and filmed in Shanghai at Parsons Music on August 8, 2026.This is a Chinese language programme with bilingual subtitles. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

The music of the great French composer Olivier Messiaen is the last thing one would expect at a swing party, the last thing a band will play at a jazz club, and the absolute last thing couples will tangle with in a ballroom. It is music written for the end of the world, not for the end of a pleasant Saturday evening with a gin and tonic in hand. And yet what seems categorically, cosmically, structurally impossible was made possible by a seemingly crazy experiment from Alec Haavik, jazz musician, teacher, saxophonist, clarinettist, arranger, occasional singer and enthusiastic accumulator of brass instruments, on the night of August 8 at the JZ Club in Shanghai, just before a typhoon system was about to remind the city that the apocalypse, or at least a reasonable facsimile of one, was very much on the agenda.Why is it that every time something truly unhinged happens in this city, a typhoon is involved? There must be something in the barometric pressure that loosens the grip of reason and allows ideas like “let’s perform Messiaen at a swing dance” to pass from the realm of the certifiably lunatic into the realm of the actually scheduled. Shanghai residents know this phenomenon well. The storm rolls in from the Pacific, the sky turns that particular shade of yellowish green that meteorologists call “unsettled” and locals call “here we go again,” and somewhere in a jazz club below a pool, a man with a clarinet announces a world premiere.To appreciate the full audacity of what Haavik pulled off that evening, one must first understand what the Quartet for the End of Time actually is. Messiaen composed it in 1941 while interned as a prisoner of war in Stalag VIII-A in Görlitz, Germany, a detail that suggests the composer had already decided, quite reasonably, that things could not get much worse, so he might as well write something about the literal end of temporal existence. The work is scored for violin, cello, clarinet and piano, runs to eight movements, and draws on the Book of Revelation for its structural and spiritual architecture. Its sixth movement, the one Haavik chose to arrange, is called Danse de la fureur, pour les sept trompettes: the furious dance of the seven trumpets, those being the seven trumpets of the Apocalypse that herald, among other cheerful events, the cessation of all time. It is music of ferocious rhythmic asymmetry, obsessive unison passages and an almost geological sense of duration. It is not, in any conventional sense, a tune you can swing to.Haavik knows this perfectly well. “I just imagined that it would not even be possible to arrange this music for a swing dance,” he says, with the equanimity of a man who has spent more than two decades playing jazz in China and has long since stopped being deterred by impossibility. “But I decided, even if it’s not possible, I’m going to do it anyway.” This is, one suspects, also the attitude that led him to spend twenty years learning to teach jazz history in Mandarin, which is its own particular category of unreasonable ambition.The story of Haavik in Shanghai is itself a kind of extended improvisation. He arrived here with a jazz musician’s background, a semester’s Chinese from a college exchange in Taiwan, and a determination to build his jazz vocabulary in the language from scratch. He succeeded well enough that roughly 90% of his teaching at JZ School, which he joined not long after it opened, is conducted in Mandarin. This is the sort of biographical detail that makes other expatriates feel slightly inadequate at dinner parties.His relationship with Messiaen’s Quartet goes back further still. He first encountered it as a young musician in Boston, just out of college, when someone pressed a cassette tape into his hands and said, essentially, you’ll like this. He did. Years later, newly arrived in Shanghai, the idea of performing Movement VI took hold, initially in a rock fusion arrangement involving two drummers, an organ player, a pianist and himself on tenor saxophone. That was 2007. The clarinet part, which sits at the heart of the original’s unison writing, had to be transposed upward to accommodate the instrument he was playing. It was, he concedes, an unusual setup. Nearly 20 years passed before he came back to the piece.The gap, he explains, came down to swing. In the intervening years, Haavik had thrown himself into the swing tradition with the wholehearted commitment of a convert: performing it, teaching it, choreographing the intersection of music and dance with his band the Shindiggers. Swing, by its nature, demands something from the body. It is music built for motion, for the love affair bewteen sound and movement, for the specific pleasure of two people navigating rhythm together on a dance floor. Messiaen’s Quartet, with its ferocious asymmetries and its theological ambitions, is built for something rather different, namely for sitting very still and reconsidering your assumptions about the nature of time.And yet. The sixth movement does, after all, bear the word danse in its title. It is the furious dance of the seven trumpets, not the polite standing-around-contemplating-eternity of the seven trumpets. If Messiaen himself called it a dance, Haavik reasoned, perhaps it was at least theoretically danceable. Whether the swing dancers at JZ Club that evening would agree was, as he acknowledged beforehand with admirable candour, another matter entirely. “I cannot guarantee it,” he said, “because this is quite outside the realm of what swing dancers would normally dance to. But I warned some people.”The typhoon, naturally, was outside the realm of what most people would normally schedule a concert around, and yet there they all were: the band and the dancers and the audience, in a jazz club in Shanghai, collectively deciding that the end of time, or at least its furious dance, was a reasonable way to spend a night. By the end of the premiere, Haavik was calling for applause for the band that had played this extremely difficult music, and also for the dancers who had taken a chance and ventured to move to it.It is hard to know what Messiaen would have made of any of this. When I suggested to Haavik that the composer would probably be very happy about the arrangement, Haavik’s response was diplomatically noncommittal: “I’m not sure about that.” The composer was, after all, a deeply serious Catholic mystic for whom time cycles and apocalyptic prophecy were matters of genuine spiritual weight, not raw material for a swing arrangement in a Shanghai jazz club the night before a typhoon. Then again, Messiaen also spent time in 1976 in the American West, listening to the birds of Utah and composing Des canyons aux étoiles, a piece conceived as a signal from humanity to outer space. A man who thought on those terms might well have found something to appreciate in the sheer brazenness of what Haavik attempted.This year marks the semiquincentennial of the United States, a fact that gives the Messiaen connection an additional symmetry. When Messiaen visited America for its bicentennial in 1976, he went not to its cities or its industrial heartland but to the Grand Canyon, drawn by the landscape, the silence and the birds. The piece he wrote is a meditation on deep time and cosmic scale. Fifty years on, an American musician living in Shanghai chose the same composer’s most eschatological work as the vehicle for an experiment in swing dancing, on a night when a typhoon was bearing down on the city. The cycles do tend to rhyme.The time cycles in the Quartet itself, Haavik explains, are so large that within the space of the piece they never actually coincide. The end of time is always theoretically approaching but never quite arriving, which describes the situation in Shanghai on a typhoon evening rather precisely. The storm was coming. The end of time was a subject of active musical inquiry. And in the middle of it all, against every reasonable expectation, people danced to The End of Time.Messiaen, one feels, would at minimum have understood the impulse. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

Part IThe starting point interview is a piece of news: in July 2026, the Leeds International Piano Competition lifted its restriction on repertoire, placing no preferences whatsoever on programme choice. When KLASSIKOM covered the story, its founder Rudolph Tang wrote to the competition director and received a reply confirming that Chinese piano works, whether by composers no longer living or those active today, were warmly welcome. The response prompted a larger question: what would it actually take for Chinese piano music to make a meaningful entry into the world’s major piano competitions?To explore this, Tang invited Dr Ni Chenkang, an avant-garde composer and postdoctoral fellow at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, to discuss the structural, historical and cultural obstacles involved at a concert hall sponsored by Parsons Music in Shanghai.The repertoire lockNi begins by mapping the terrain. International piano competitions typically organise their required works into three categories: études, which showcase pure technique; fugues and polyphonic works, which demonstrate the piano’s capacity for multiple simultaneous voices; and a broader category of pieces, where competitors have more freedom of choice.The first two categories, Ni argues, are effectively closed to Chinese composers. The étude has been defined by Chopin and Liszt’s Transcendental Études, which pushed finger technique to an extraordinary level. Ligeti’s Études opened new pianistic possibilities, but since then no composer has meaningfully extended the form. To surpass what already exists would be to transcend the physical limits of the human hand. The fugue presents a different problem: it is rooted in Western counterpoint and tonality, major and minor keys, harmonic and melodic modes, church modes, a system that evolved over centuries from Gregorian chant through Palestrina and the Renaissance. For a Chinese composer to work within this system, the modal framework alone presents an immediate and fundamental obstacle.That leaves the third category, pieces, as the only realistic entry point for Chinese works. Here the scope is broader: a piece can run to ten or fifteen minutes, encompass a wide range of musical material, and showcase musicality rather than technique alone. But even within this category, constraints apply. The structure cannot be too simple, the content cannot be too one-dimensional, and the work must demonstrate the full range of the piano’s technical possibilities in a comprehensive way. These filters, applied together, make the selection of suitable Chinese works an increasingly refined process.The notation limitationA deeper issue underlies the question of repertoire: the limits of musical notation. Ni argues that when music is written down, it loses the vast majority of its original content up to twenty percent or more. When a second person then interprets that notation, another layer of distance is added. What is produced compared to the original diverges further still.The implication for performance is significant. Listening to previous recordings is necessary but not sufficient. What a performer most needs is an understanding of the cultural context of a work like the composer’s own experience, the environment and society of the time, the artistic life of the world in which the composer lived. Only with that understanding can a performer’s musical instincts and sensitivity genuinely deepen.Ni develops the cultural argument with a concrete example: Chopin’s Polonaises. The Polonaise is rooted in Polish dance, and if a performer has never seen how that dance is actually danced, they will never capture the essential quality of the music. The three beats as notated are not the same as the three beats as actually felt. In the dance, a specific movement of the foot produces a displaced accent, where the expected ONE-two-three becomes one-TWO-three or one-two-THREE. Without understanding this, the feeling cannot be reproduced at the keyboard.The same principle applies to the Baroque dance forms like the courante, the gavotte, the tarantella which were real dances before they became musical forms. The notation records the notes but not the physical gesture from which the rhythmic character originally came.This, Ni suggests, is precisely where subtle distinctions emerge at major competitions. Tang recalls that Fou Ts’ong, competing at the Chopin Competition, did not win first or second prize but took the award for the best Polonaise performance. Ni’s response is immediate: that must have come from a deep understanding of the work’s background and a genuine identification with its culture, something he regards as even more important than piano technique itself.The Chinese advantageThe argument arrives at its conclusion: if Chinese pianists entering international competitions could bring Chinese piano works with them, they would possess a natural advantage that no outsider can easily replicate. A pianist who has grown up in China, who speaks Chinese, whose cultural formation is rooted in that tradition, will be better placed to tell a Chinese musical story than someone approaching it from the outside.Tang is careful to qualify this. He is not arguing that Chinese pianists have no advantage playing Chopin — clearly they do, just as Polish pianists can play Tchaikovsky superbly and Russian pianists can play Chopin brilliantly. The point is more specific: when he hears the Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto or the Yellow River Piano Concerto, he feels it in his blood immediately, in a way that non-Chinese listeners may not. The real question, and the one Ni finds most worth exploring, is whether Chinese pianists playing Chinese works can make those works stir that same visceral resonance in audiences of any cultural background.That question has no ready answer. It depends on the works themselves, and on the courage and confidence of the performers willing to bring them to the international stage.Interviewed on August 7, 2026 in Shanghai.To be continued This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

Internationally renowned conductor and Mozart expert Ivor Bolton travelled to Shanghai in April for a concert with the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra and pianist Chen Sa in an all-Mozart programme presented at the Shanghai Concert Hall on April 11, 2026.Here he shared his insights with Chen Sa and anchor Rudolph Tang in a live-streamed public talk at the HQs of SPO on April 9.This is an English and Chinese programme. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

Ahead of a performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 6 in Shenyang under American-Chinese conductor Yongyan Hu, French horn player Li Yule, who performs with the joint "Musical Northeast Super League" orchestra formed by the Jilin, Liaoning and Harbin Symphony Orchestras, shares her journey from choosing the horn as a child to becoming an orchestral musician. She discusses the physical challenges faced by female horn players, the pride of returning to perform in her hometown, and the significance of collaborating in one of the orchestral repertoire's most demanding works. Reflecting on the rapid development of brass education in China, Li credits advances in pedagogy, international exchange and scientific understanding of performance, while emphasising that artistic passion remains the foundation of lasting musical achievement.This is a Chinese language programme with bilingual subtitles.Interviewed in Shenyang on July 24, 2026 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

When three professional orchestras from China’s Northeast, the Liaoning, Jilin, and Harbin symphonies, converged on Shenyang to perform Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 under a single conductor, the event was unusual enough to prompt comparisons to the World Cup. The conductor at the centre of it was Yongyan Hu, a graduate of both Yale and Juilliard who founded the Orchestra Academy at the Central Conservatory of Music and has spent decades building orchestral culture across China. I spoke with him in Shanghai immediately after the performance on July 24th, tracing a conversation that ranged from the logistics of multi-orchestra collaboration to the nature of Mahler’s genius, his friendships with Gilbert Kaplan, and the arc of his own lifelong relationship with one of the most demanding bodies of music ever written.Maestro, you have just conducted the Mahler Symphony No. 6 in Shenyang with three Northeast orchestras. Could you walk yus through how this collaboration came about?The joint project between the three orchestras has a history going back before the Covid. I had already collaborated with them on Mahler’s Second, then the Third, and Richard Strauss’s An Alpine Symphony. This must be our third or fourth time. The core is always the Liaoning Symphony here in Shenyang, with the Jilin Symphony and the Harbin Symphony joining them. The numbers vary each time, but we always gather at the Liaoning’s own rehearsal hall and concert venue. What makes these collaborations work is first of all the relationships between the three ensembles, from the leadership down to individual players. Many of them grew up together, went to school together. When you finally bring this many outstanding musicians into one room and the collective energy erupts, it is genuinely thrilling. It reminds me of the World Cup: every player comes from their own excellent club, but when they join the national team they serve a larger interest. The head coach says “we’ll do it this way”, you might have been a striker, but now you play defence. The analogy fits rather well.As conductor, you are the head coach. How do you work through rehearsals with three combined orchestras to draw out the sound you are looking for?Every conductor wants to hear their own sound, that is a fundamental element of the conducting art. But we all know that realising every idea is impossible. With so many people gathered in one city, sharing a hotel, eating together, the costs are real and the time constraints are considerable. So the task is to find the most efficient approach, and the first principle is that we must never compromise the dignity of the music itself. Understanding Mahler’s score, what it actually says, what he actually intended, is paramount. The closer you come to Mahler’s original intent, the better the decisions you make. And those decisions, however complex the music they address, must be as simple as possible. The conductor’s work is to reduce complexity to clarity.Where do you find the greatest difficulty in Mahler specifically?The primary requirement, I believe, is an exceptionally strong grounding in music theory, like a surgeon’s scalpel or an X-ray, something that lets you see through to the structure at once. Everything in Mahler is assembled from smaller structural units, and in the process of combining them something new and entirely unexpected emerges. It is like a chemistry experiment: knowing each element is not sufficient, because when A and B, or A, B, and C, combine, they produce a reaction that none of the elements produced alone. Take the simplest example: Mahler uses a quadruple woodwind orchestra, four flutes, four oboes, eight horns, six trumpets, two sets of timpani. A simple melody is sometimes given to one flute, sometimes to all four simultaneously. What is the difference? Why did Mahler make this choice? The conductor must know this intimately. The second difficulty is what I call the temptation. Mahler in fragments is so extraordinarily vivid, the emotional tension in a single passage can be overwhelming. A conductor resonates with one section and over-colours it, over-extends it. The result actually damages the integrity of the whole. It is the most common problem in performing Mahler.China’s orchestras once rarely touched Mahler, and now he is performed everywhere. What does that shift signify?I think of it as a breakthrough from zero to one, and that matters enormously. When I was a student at the Central Conservatory, Chinese orchestras had essentially never performed Mahler. Around my third or fourth college year, the Central Philharmonic, now the China National Symphony, gave Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, conducted by Han Zhongjie. We all went. Honestly, none of us really understood it yet. But the orchestra had done it. That was a breakthrough from zero, not easily achieved. In the early 1990s, I was invited by the Central Philharmonic to visit Taiwan, the first musical exchange of its kind across the Strait. I remember when our musicians first walked onto the stage in Taipei. The entire hall erupted in thunderous applause because there were many family members in that audience who had been separated across the Strait for decades, reuniting in a concert hall through Mahler’s music. Many people were in tears. That was the Mahler Fifth, almost certainly its first performance on the mainland. Later I conducted it again with the Shanghai Symphony, and it has since become one of the works I have returned to most often throughout my career. I remember my audition programme for the music director post at Duluth was also the Mahler Fifth. And the tenth anniversary concert of the Orchestra Academy I founded at the Central Conservatory in 2016, the Mahler Fifth again. There is something almost sacred about that work for me.You borrowed the score of Mahler’s First from the Conservatory library as a student and could only read two pages. How did you get from there to conducting Mahler regularly?Life experience, and relentless study. But I would add: it is most directly connected to the relentless study one puts in when young. We talk about the foundation built in childhood. We usually mean playing the piano or the violin, but the capacity to read a score like Mahler’s is very closely related to how one learned to read scores as a young conductor. I should say: Mahler’s music is actually closer to us than it might seem. The Sixth Symphony was written around 1906 to 1908, well within living memory of living memory. I first conducted Mahler before I was thirty, with a youth orchestra in Connecticut called the Norwalk Youth Orchestra, which was between Yale and New York, about fifty minutes by train. I was rehearsing there every Saturday during my years at Yale and Juilliard. A cohort of students about to graduate asked whether they could perform Mahler’s First. I had never conducted it. I thought they were overestimating themselves a little. But I said: of course. It was the first time I truly experienced what conducting Mahler meant. At that same time I was working as an usher at Lincoln Center. Zubin Mehta was music director of the New York Philharmoni, a great Mahlerian conductor. Bernstein came back frequently and recorded those legendary recordings, the Mahler Third was recorded live there, five concerts in a week, at least five takes. Every conductor’s path to Mahler is different.Tell us about Gilbert Kaplan and his influence on you.Gilbert Kaplan was a dear friend who has since passed away. His influence on me was profound. When I was at the Shanghai Philharmonic I invited him to conduct the Mahler Second. He came, and in a wonderfully amusing turn invited me to dinner at the Jinjiang Hotel. He had brought an entire entourage of American press, the Wall Street Journal, Money Magazine. I said: you’ve come all this way and the whole American media followed you. He smiled and said: all of that is mine. He later sold everything and founded the Mahler Foundation. He acquired the autograph manuscript of Mahler’s Second Symphony at auction. His final recording was a chamber arrangement of the Second, his own arrangement, with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra. He went separately to Berlin to record the organ passage in the Resurrection finale because he was told the organ at the Berlin Philharmonie was superior. For Mahler he would stop at nothing. One of his later projects was a book cataloguing every work Mahler ever conducted as a conductor throughout his career. You can see Mahler’s obsessive devotion, Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3 was a particular love of his, performed nearly every season at the New York Philharmonic. And when he programmed his own symphonies, knowing they were long and not yet popular in America, he would often place his First Symphony in the first half, follow it with Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, and close with a Wagner overture: the dessert at the end. If his own symphony had closed the programme, many people might simply have left. There is one detail I find particularly moving: in 1911, the year of his death, the season was drawing to a close and he fell ill. He went to Europe for treatment; everyone assumed he would be back very soon. The concerts were taken over by the associate conductor, but the orchestra never bothered to change his name on the programmes, they thought he would be back any day. Those programmes still bear his name. And he never came back. I remember the very first day I arrived at Juilliard, on the corner of 66th Street there was Tower Records. Hanging in the window was a large photograph advertising Kaplan’s Mahler Second recording. I recognised Seiji Ozawa, but I had never seen this unfamiliar face. Gradually I came to understand: this man was a devoted amateur , as we say in Chinese. Yet his contribution to the Mahler cause was indelible.What is the source of Mahler’s extraordinary power, for conductors, for music lovers?Beethoven was the master of them all, Mahler, Wagner, Bruckner all descend from that lineage. In Mahler we see a great and gifted musician showing us how to inherit an entire tradition while revealing a world completely unlike Beethoven’s own. The polyphonic elements in the Sixth Symphony are extraordinarily powerful, especially in the fourth movement, where you can dimly make out Bach’s name encoded: B, A, C and the H emerges elsewhere in the texture. It is said that Mahler studied Bach’s polyphony every single day; he regarded it as the wellspring of everything. What Mahler inherited from Beethoven above all, I think, is the spirit of thought within the music, and he took it to its absolute extreme. He is philosophy expressed in sound. Mahler is also close to us in a way Beethoven cannot be. Beethoven’s world had no industrial revolution, no motor car. Mahler arrived in New York, it was already the dazzling, overwhelming world we can recognise. He himself said his compositions were a world, which is entirely unlike Sibelius, who wrote a symphony in thirty minutes: one Sibelius symphony equals one movement of a Mahler symphony. You hold the Bruno Walter Scholarship at Juilliard. What does that connection mean to you?When I was first awarded the scholarship, it was actually named for Alma Mahler, Mahler’s wife. The school used to suggest that each semester we write a thank-you letter. Bruno Walter, of course, was Mahler’s most devoted student and his greatest interpreter. To receive a scholarship bearing that lineage, and then to spend a lifetime in Mahler’s music, the connection feels like more than coincidence. At my stage now, thirty or forty years on from those first encounters with the score, the way I see Mahler is completely different. I very much want to conduct more of his symphonies, to go further, to approach what the music is capable of touching in the soul. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

American-Chinese conductor Yongyan Hu transformed a public rehearsal of Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 into an immersive community outreach event on Tuesday evening, inviting audiences not only to observe the Liaoning Symphony Orchestra at work but also to become part of the creative process.Held at the headquarters of the Liaoning Opera House / Liaoning Symphony Orchestra in Shenyang, the open day attracted hundreds of music lovers of all ages. In a departure from the traditional open rehearsal format, Hu invited a kid from the audience onto the podium to experience conducting first-hand, while listeners in the hall joined in by moving their arms to the music’s powerful rhythms, sharing in the orchestra’s collective pulse.Where most public rehearsals simply offer a glimpse behind the scenes, Hu’s approach placed audiences at the heart of music-making, allowing them to experience the physical energy and emotional momentum that drive a symphony orchestra in rehearsal.The concept has long been one of Hu’s artistic trademarks. During his tenure with the EOS Orchestra Academy at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, similarly interactive rehearsals became a signature of his work. A graduate of both Yale University and The Juilliard School, Hu has embraced the tradition of community engagement championed by American musicians such as Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, and Michael Tilson Thomas, incorporating pre-concert outreach activities into his artistic practice.Rather than treating rehearsals as closed-door preparations, Hu sees them as opportunities to demystify the orchestral process, encouraging audiences to engage with music actively in a relaxed setting and to gain a deeper understanding of how an orchestra shapes a performance long before the concert begins. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

As a major typhoon system is about to hit Shanghai, JZ Club offered the city a Latino Jazz night at its Hengshan Road headquarters that was as educational as it was irresistible.Led by bandleader, saxophonist, flautist and vocalist Alec Haavik, the eleven-piece band brought together Chinese musicians and expats from Cuba, the United States and Puerto Rico, all based in Shanghai. Through a programme that wove live performance with informal talk, the ensemble traced the distinctive rhythmic pulse of Cuban music and charted the creative territory where Latin jazz meets bebop and swing.The result was a night that proved you don’t need sunshine to feel the dry heat of Havana. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

When conductor high school student Wu Jiayu stepped out of a Senza New Strings concert last night at Jazz at Lincoln Centre Shanghai, she had plenty to say.The evening was a full tribute programme dedicated to Charlie Parker, presented by saxophonist Charlie Wang and Senza New Strings led by violinist Chen Hongda. For Wang, the night carried a personal dimension: his English name was itself a nod to Bird, making this concert something he had long dreamed of bringing to life. The result, in Wu’s assessment, was electric.What struck Wu most was the ensemble’s central creative idea. The fusion of jazz with strings was balancing classical refinement on one side with jazz freedom on the other. The ensemble’s name says it all: Senza, meaning “without mute”. The idea is one of liberation, playing louder, more expressively, without the restraint that a mute imposes. In that spirit, the evening felt genuinely fresh, a combination Wu found both inventive and convincing.But it was the personnel on stage that left perhaps the deepest impression. Wu singled out the evening’s bassist for particular praise, and reflected warmly on the growing prominence of women in jazz. Female jazz drummer and bassist, she noted, are a force to be reckoned with, and their increasing visibility feels to her like a real and meaningful shift in the landscape.Off the podium and on a school holiday, Wu is spending her time continuing her conducting studies and practising piano. Her ambition, she says, is to one day pursue the same kind of creative innovation she witnessed that night, fusing the new with the distinctly Chinese. For Wu Jiayu, that is what music is ultimately for.This is a Chinese programme with bilingual subtitles. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

The China National Symphony Orchestra (CNSO) marked its 70th anniversary this week with a groundbreaking ceremony at its longtime base in Beijing’s Heping Li district, launching the demolition and rebuilding of a headquarters the orchestra has long outgrown and which, according to those present, had become structurally unsafe.Six conductors with deep ties to the orchestra gathered for the occasion this morning: Jing Huan, Shui Lan, Chen Xieyang, Tang Muhai, Tan Lihua, and Li Xincao, among them former Music Director and President of the ensemble. A hydraulic demolition machine took a ceremonial bite out of the roof of the old building, which has stood since the orchestra’s predecessor, the Central Philharmonic Society, was founded in 1956. The CNSO was reconstituted under its current name in 1996. The new building is expected to be completed in three years.The groundbreaking comes amid a broader wave of infrastructure investment in Beijing’s classical music scene. The China Philharmonic Orchestra has completed its new concert hall in Sanlitun, now cleared for use. The Beijing Symphony Orchestra has moved into new premises near the Beijing Art Centre in the city’s sub-centre. Together, the relocations mean that all of Beijing’s major state-affiliated orchestras have either secured or are on their way to securing new homes.The momentum extends beyond the capital. Two new opera houses have opened this year: the Tide Opera House in Yanguan of Jiaxing and the Shanghai Grand Opera House, signalling sustained state commitment to classical music and the broader performing arts sector. As one observer noted, better hardware naturally raises the bar for programming. Infrastructure and artistic ambition, in the end, go hand in hand. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

Renowned Chinese baritone and Dean of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Prof Liao Changyong, one of the foremost interpreters of art song in the world today, travelled to Hamburg in mid June with the SCM Chamber Orchestra for a concert at the Laeiszhalle on June 19th, conducted by Prof Clemens Malich.Joined by Hamburg-based musicians, among them students of the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, the ensemble accompanied Liao in song cycles by Mahler and Ravel alongside works by Chinese composers, framed by a programme that also drew on Brahms, Vivaldi, Zhu Jian’er, Huang Yijun and Chen Gang.In this documentary, music critic Rudolph Tang spoke with Prof Malich, Prof Elmar Lampson and several of the German guest musicians about what it means to share a stage across cultural boundaries, their admiration for Liao’s command of the German Lied, their encounter with Chinese music, and their sense of belonging to a single, borderless musical family shared with European legacy. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

He was born in Hamburg, grew up in its orchestras, and is weeks away from his graduation recital. But for violinist Ilya Altınçınar, a student at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg in the class of Professor Caroline Onimus, the concert at Laeiszhalle on June 19th offered something his conservatoire training hadn’t yet: the experience of sharing a stage with seasoned professionals from a different musical tradition entirely.Interviewed ahead of the concert that night, Altınçınar — whose parents are from southern Turkey, giving him a personal familiarity with musical cultures beyond the Western canon — spoke warmly about what it meant to perform alongside the members of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music Chamber Orchestra, all professors at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. For a student still completing his degree, the encounter carried a particular weight.The programme itself was an unusual one. Works by Mahler and Ravel, typically performed with piano accompaniment, were presented here in chamber orchestra arrangements, a format Altınçınar found well-suited to the music, noting that the fuller orchestral sound offered a tonal balance that a solo piano or harp might not always achieve. Chinese art songs rounded out an evening that moved between Western Romanticism and the pentatonic landscapes of Chinese music, the latter something Altınçınar associated with nature, harmony and stillness, and which he found deeply calming.The concert’s centrepiece was baritone Prof Liao Changyong, one of China’s most celebrated singers. Altınçınar, listening as both a musician and a native German speaker, was struck not only by the richness and presence of Liao’s voice, powerful enough to fill the hall on the strength of his vibrato alone, but by the exceptional clarity of his German diction. For a language often considered forbidding in its density of consonants, Liao’s text was, in Altınçınar’s assessment, entirely and effortlessly intelligible.His graduation recital, featuring Beethoven’s Violin Sonata in A minor, two Sarasate Spanish Dances, and the complete Bach Partita in D minor, lies just ahead. But on this June evening in Hamburg, the young violinist found himself part of something broader: a concert that brought Shanghai and Hamburg into the same room, and made the distance between them feel, for a few hours, very small.Interviewed and filmed on June 19th, 2026 in Hamburg. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

Step inside Hamburg’s landmark Elbphilharmonie, renowned for its cutting-edge acoustics and its welcoming Plaza, where sweeping panoramic views reveal both the city’s historic waterfront and its industrial skyline.The Elbphilharmonie is celebrating its tenth anniversary this season, marking a decade as one of the world’s most influential concert halls. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

Under the baton of Zhang Liang, the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra performed Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 last night at the Shanghai Oriental Art Centre.The audience observed more than four minutes of silence after the final chord, as captured in this amateur video. Given the notoriously overdeveloped clapping muscles of some concertgoers, that may have been the highest compliment both Mahler and the performers could have received in Shanghai. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

The Berlin Philharmonic has no shortage of signature events. The New Year’s Eve concert, the European Concert, the Easter Festival in Baden-Baden (now back to Salzburg), the summer Waldbühne open-air, these are among the most reliably sold-out dates in the orchestral calendar. But there is one event that is rarer than any of them, and unlike the others, entirely free: the Open Day.It doesn’t happen every year. It is held biannually, sometimes less, tied to particular occasions rather than a fixed slot in the calendar. That irregularity only adds to its value. When the Philharmonie opens its doors to everyone, it is an occasion that even regular concertgoers treat as exceptional.This year’s Open Day fell on June 21, World Music Day, or in its original French, La Fête de la Musique. The date was no coincidence. First celebrated in Paris in 1982, the day was conceived by Jack Lang, then France’s Minister of Culture, and Maurice Fleuret, with the vision of bringing music out of concert halls and into public spaces, making it accessible to all. It has since spread to more than 120 countries and over 1,000 cities around the world. In Berlin, the entire city throws open its doors on June 21, and this year, that included the Philharmonie itself.The Philharmonie’s Open Day is built around free admission and live music throughout the building, with orchestra and chamber showcases in a wide variety of venues, flashmobs, tours and open-air events through Hans Scharoun’s visionary architecture, and activities for the youngest visitors, including trying instruments, arts and crafts, and family tours. On a normal day, the Philharmonie is not open to the public without a ticket, and even ticket-holders are generally confined to the lobby and the main hall. The Open Day is the rare chance to explore the building from top to bottom and inside out, to hear and see it as a living organism rather than a ticketed destination.This year’s programme ran from 11am to 6pm and was, by any measure, a full day. Two orchestral open rehearsals, seated, first-come first-served, gave audiences the chance to hear chief conductor Kirill Petrenko work through repertoire with the orchestra: not a polished performance, but the real, unvarnished process of music-making at the highest level. For many visitors, this was the draw.The undisputed centrepiece of the lobby programme, however, was the horn flashmob. Principal horn Stefan Dohr, his colleague and section ambassador Sarah Willis, and the new co-principal Yun Zeng, who joined the orchestra in September 2024 after winning first prize at the 2019 Tchaikovsky Competition and previously serving as principal horn of the Staatskapelle Berlin, led an all-star lineup through a crowd-filling session that drew in horn enthusiasts of all ages, including small children clutching toy instruments hearing live horn playing for the very first time. If the mission of an Open Day is to make people fall in love with classical music and the instruments that make it, this was the mission accomplished in real time.One first-time visitor to Berlin, Hamburg based violin student Ljubica Bićanin who plays in the Shanghai Conservatory of Music Chamber Orchestra and had come to the city as part of the ensemble’s preparations for a concert that evening at the Konzerthaus, found herself in a seat at the afternoon open rehearsal and in warm conversation with Yun Zeng. It was her first time inside the Philharmonie and, by any account, a memorable introduction.The full Open Day experience also included a quiet room sponsored by Deutsche Bank, soundproofed and furnished with lounge chairs, a small but telling detail about how thoughtfully the event is staged. The Philharmonie on Open Day is a carefully considered invitation into the full world of the orchestra, paced to welcome visitors who might find a full day of music overwhelming, and rewarding to those who want every minute of it.All of which prompts a natural question: when the Berlin Philharmonic next tours China, could a Chinese promoter or management company make something like this happen: a full Open Day at the Shanghai Grand Opera House or the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing? Free, open to all, no tickets required? The model is proven, the goodwill it generates is enormous, and there is a vast Chinese audience that has heard of the Berlin Philharmonic but never had the chance to encounter it on anything other than ticketed terms.It is, at the very least, an idea worth putting on the table. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

Every major music competition carries an open secret: the live broadcast shows you the performance, but it never shows you the deliberation. What happens in the jury room — how scores are tallied, what gets argued over, which compromises get struck before a name is announced — has long been the part of the process competitions guard most closely. Jurors sign NDA, media are barred from the room, and even competition officials have historically had no right of entry. The result is an industry built, in part, on rumor: stories of jurors trading favors for their own students, of heated arguments settled by horse-trading rather than merit, of results decided well before the final note is played.Last week, at the 5th International Conducting Competition for Chinese Music in Hong Kong, that veil lifted — at least partially, and at least for the five observers.Invited by the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra to serve as an observer for the competition’s final round, I was granted rare access to the jury room itself from June 25 to 28, present throughout the scoring, tabulation, public disclosure and sign-off process. The NDA still stands — the documents and any discussion inside the room remain undisclosed — but the more striking revelation was procedural: there was barely any discussion to report. Scores were submitted, results were calculated, and the room moved from entry to confirmed outcome in roughly ten minutes. No theatrics, no backroom haggling, nothing eventful or even newsworthy — just numbers doing the talking.It’s a sharp contrast to the picture painted by veteran piano pedagogue Vladimir Viardo, who once described the rules of a music contest during the 2023 Tchaikovsky Competition in blunter terms: the real first round isn’t the preliminary heats, it’s the jury’s initial selections; the real final isn’t the final concert, it’s the jury’s closing discussion. That kind of opacity is precisely what fuels suspicion in classical music’s competition circuit — when the truth is hidden, speculation fills the vacuum.What Hong Kong demonstrated last week was the alternative: a transparent, efficient, almost anticlimactic jury process that the correspondent called unmatched among competitions of its kind, and one other contests would do well to emulate.The transparency mattered because the result it produced was worth getting right. This was the competition’s founding mission from the start. Looking back over a decade, Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra leadership had identified a real gap in the field: Chinese orchestras had made strong creative and technical progress — including in instrument reform — but there was a serious shortage of skilled conductors specializing in Chinese music, and no international programmes existed to showcase that talent. The orchestra responded by launching the world’s first International Conducting Competition for Chinese Music in 2011, building on the conducting masterclasses it had already been running. Since then, the competition has been held four times — in 2011, 2014, 2017 and 2019/24 — in partnership with institutions including the Xi’an Conservatory of Music and the Taiwan National Chinese Orchestra, drawing more than 200 entrants from around the world over the years.This year’s edition produced a clear, decisive winner. Conducting the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra in Liu Yuan’s The Zen ofAutumn in the Mountains and a wind-and-percussion arrangement of the Shanxi folk piece The Grand Victory by Zhang Shiye at the final on June 28th, Chen Yu-Chia swept the competition — taking the Champion title along with awards for Best Interpretation of a Hong Kong Work, Most Popular with the Orchestra Members, and Most Popular with the Media. Four trophies, a rare clean sweep, and a result that matched the title of the very piece he conducted: Grand Victory.Second and third place went to Zhang Yang and Chu Che-Min respectively, with all three top finishers hailing from Taiwan. The final-round jury included Bian Zushan (chair), Chew Hee Chiat, Chen Xieyang, Sun Peng and Liu Sha — four of them from mainland China — alongside a separate panel of media observers.What made this year notable wasn’t just who won. It was that, for once, an outside observer could say with confidence the process behind the result was exactly what it appeared to be. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

In this in-depth pre-concert interview conducted at the backstage of Laeiszhalle on June 19th, cellist and conductor Professor Clemens Malich of the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg reflects on a landmark evening that brings together Western and Chinese musical traditions on a single stage.The concert features baritone Liao Changyong and the Shanghai Conservatory of Music Chamber Orchestra joined by German musicians in a programme of Huang Zi, Bao Yuankai, Chen Gang, Lu Zaiyi as well as Brahms, Mahler and Ravel, etc.Malich, who also leads the acclaimed Young Classics education program, speaks thoughtfully about why cross-cultural musical exchange matters beyond the concert hall, arguing that deeper mutual understanding between peoples may itself be a path toward resolving conflict. For him, this concert is a homecoming: he traces a long Western fascination with East Asian culture through Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and early 20th-century French music, drawing a direct line to the program’s pairing of Chinese art songs with works by Mahler and Ravel.He also offers an insider’s perspective on the decision to accompany the lieder and art songs with chamber orchestra rather than piano, a choice he sees as both historically grounded and emotionally essential, and pays warm tribute to star baritone Liao Changyong, whose command of German, French, and Chinese repertoire he describes as the mark of a true international artist.The conversation ends with a charming personal note: Malich lives near Mahler’s old Hamburg address and arrived at the Laeiszhalle by bicycl, just as the great composer once did. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

Hamburg-based violinist Cian Neumann studies under private teacher Michael Holm and is currently completing a social year at a primary school. But on June 19, he steps into a very different kind of classroom: sharing the stage with elite Chinese instrumentalists for a program spanning Mahler, Vivaldi, and contemporary Chinese works.In this pre-concert conversation at Laeiszhalle, Cian speaks with genuine admiration about his Chinese colleagues, singling out the concertmaster’s jaw-dropping technique and echoing his conductor’s reaction to a stunning performance of Vivaldi’s Summer. He also weighs in on star baritone Liao Changyong’s German diction, calling it “really fantastic”, high praise from a native speaker.Having had only passing exposure to Chinese music before, Cian emerges from rehearsals converted, and already planning to bring more of it into his repertoire. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

Ljubica Bićanin, a 22-year-old viola student at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, joins Chinese soloists for a remarkable concert featuring works by Brahms, Mahler, and Ravel — alongside Chinese repertoire she’s performing for the very first time.In this brief pre-concert interview on June 19th in Hamburg, Ljubica shares her delight at collaborating with Chinese musicians, praising the warmth and energy of the orchestra. She also reflects on the experience of playing Chinese music beyond the screen: beautiful in a way she hadn’t expected. And as a German speaker herself, she has a front-row seat to assess the remarkable linguistic range of star baritone Liao Changyong — who performed in German, French, and Chinese in a single evening.The conversation ends with a shared love of Dvořák — a small moment that says everything about music’s ability to bring people together across cultures. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

In a memorable evening at Hamburg, renowned baritone Prof Liao Changyong delivered a spellbinding performance of Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen alongside Chinese classics, presented in a specially arranged chamber music setting. The concert, a testament to the long-standing artistic partnership between the music schools in Hamburg and Shanghai as well as the 40th anniversary of the twin-city, left audiences and musicians alike deeply moved at Laeiszhalle on June 19th. The SCM Chamber Music Orchestra is conducted by Clemens Malich.Prof Elmar Lampson, Professor in Composition Department of HfMT (Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg) also the ex-president of HfMT attended the concert. Speaking of Liao, he was full of praise: “You understand every German word — his pronunciation and his style is amazing.” He was equally struck by the evening’s programme, which wove Chinese music alongside Mahler and Ravel: “Isn’t it amazing how this Chinese music fits so well with Mahler, with Ravel and with the Romantic music — we are one musical family between China and Europe.”Reflecting on the collaboration between the two institutions, Lampson concluded: “This concert is something very special and something really great.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

Keyboardist and song writer Shaonan “Trigger" Su performs music from his latest album at JZ Club in Shanghai with two award-winning guitarists and band members flown in straight from the United States.He offered a rendition of jazz standard All of Me as the encore. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

Endorsed by Wynton Marsalis, Texas born jazz diva Kate Kortum made her Asian debut last week by wrapping up the Asian tour performing with her trio at the Jazz at Lincoln Centre Shanghai.On the bill was music by Bill Evans, Nat King Cole and Bernstein etc. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

Zhang Xiongguan, guitarist and professor at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, performs with his orchestra and guest pianist Sun Yingdi at the Shanghai Centre Theatre. The programme is a line-up of the Let Jazz Shine co-presented by JZ and Juce Culture & Media.The musicians played music inspired by Ravel and Shostakovich. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

Zhang Yi, music director of the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted SPO in a programme of Chinese and Western contempoaries including music by Penderecki starring horn player Zeng Yun, and in the second half, Guan Xia’s Symphony No. 2 “Hope”. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

On the evening of 2 June at 7:30pm, the He Luting Concert Hall of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music hosted Intangible Heritage of Shanghai, a concert of newly commissioned works for Chinese chamber ensemble.Using music to “map” Shanghai’s intangible cultural heritage, the programme featured ten newly composed works by ten composers, each inspired by a different element of the city’s local intangible cultural traditions.Earlier, on 29 May, the same programme and performers appeared at Shanghai’s Wanping Theatre as part of a public-benefit performance initiative presented by the Department of Composition and Conducting of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Marking the creative team’s first venture into community-oriented theatre outreach, the project sought to bring contemporary composition closer to the public and to give back to society through music. Centred on Shanghai’s intangible cultural heritage traditions, the concert embodied the ideal of “creating for the people and singing for the times,” receiving an enthusiastic response from audiences.Most of the ten featured composers are emerging young voices from the Shanghai Conservatory’s Department of Composition and Conducting. The programme includes:* Yuan Yuan — Weaving Brocade* Liu Ruixin — Lantern Festival Night* Xie Qinwei — Porcelain Patterns I* Li Yide — Candlelight* He Jianing — Endless Threads* Lan Junyi — Brocade Strings* Lou Jia — Flowing Light* Shi Zhixuan — Rain Bells* Li Nixia — Bronze* Lin Luxin — Boundless: Spirit of Martial ArtsThe concert showcases a wide range of traditional Chinese instruments, including pipa, guzheng, yangqin, dizi, xiao, sheng, suona, erhu, ruan, liuqin and percussion. Each ensemble combination is closely tied to a specific item of Shanghai intangible cultural heritage.* Weaving Brocade for pipa, piano and percussion draws inspiration from Shanghai-style wool embroidery, recreating the metallic shimmer of needles weaving through silk.* Lantern Festival Night for flute, sheng, guzheng, yangqin and percussion evokes the famed Yuyuan Lantern Festival, reimagining the poetic scene of “trees of flowers blooming in the night wind”.* Porcelain Patterns I for pipa, guzheng and percussion is inspired by Shanghai’s traditional ceramic restoration techniques and incorporates the folk tune Little Bench.* Candlelight for bamboo flute, suona, pipa and piano draws on the traditional gongs-and-drums storytelling art of Nanhui, using rhythmic patterns transmitted directly by heritage practitioners.* Endless Threads for percussion and piano takes inspiration from Mianquan martial arts, embedding hidden musical motifs within its pitch structure.* Brocade Strings for Chinese chamber ensemble reflects the delicate elegance of Songjiang’s Shijin gong-and-drum tradition, capturing the refined softness associated with Jiangnan culture.* Flowing Light for ruan and piano explores the folk beliefs surrounding the Little White Dragon of Jinshan, imagining a dance between the sun deity Xihe and water spirits.* Rain Bells for liuqin and accordion takes its cue from Jiading bamboo carving and musically depicts Emperor Xuanzong of Tang remembering Yang Guifei amid falling rain.* Bronze for sheng, guzheng and percussion is inspired by the bronze craftsmanship of the Shanghai Museum, conjuring the fierce imagery of ancient taotie motifs.* Boundless: Spirit of Martial Arts for Chinese chamber ensemble pays tribute to Jingwu martial arts culture, transcending sectarian traditions and transforming martial movement into musical expression.For general audiences, the most immediate appeal of the concert lies in the vivid imagery and storytelling behind each piece. Flickering candle flames in Candlelight, the crisp sound of silver needles touching silk in Weaving Brocade, or the wistful ringing of rain-soaked carriage bells in Rain Bells all create scenes that listeners can instantly picture and emotionally connect with.Each composition is also accompanied by a re-imagined digital visual projections, revamped from the first show last year. Images of traditional craftsmanship, historic streets illuminated by lantern festivals, and ancient bronze motifs will flow across the screen in synchronisation with the music, creating an immersive dialogue between sound and image. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

In his fourth visit to China, Ion Marin conducts the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra and encores Grigoraș Dinicu's Hora Staccato at the end of the programme.Ryan Wang offers two encores at the first half after performing Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2, the first of which is captured in the video.Shanghai Symphony HallMay 30, 2026 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

The Tide Opera House located in the Tide and Music Resort of Yanguan county of Jiaxing of Zhejiang province of China presented an all Tchaikovsky programme performed by the Mariinsky Orchestra under the baton of Valery Gergiev on the evening of May 19th.Formerlly Théâtre Éphémère and then Opéra des Nations in Geneva, the wooden structure of the theatre was purchased by Wu Promotion and now sits at its permanent base in Yanguan overlooking the Qiantang River. Though the opera house opened on May 1st with Lang Lang performing with the resident Tide Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Yu Lu, the Mariinsky concert has been viewed as a high profile visit that has put to test the well-acclaimed acoustic of the hall.Future plans of the inangural season are yet to be announced that might include independently produced opera productions. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

Violinist Paloma So views the Verbier Festival as a “musical paradise,” a unique ecosystem where the world’s most elite artists, students, and fans converge to “take over” the town in a shared celebration of music. After first attending the Verbier Academy two years ago, So returned last year as a featured artist, finding that the festival’s true value lies in the profound sense of community and the proximity to the industry’s “best ears.”For So, the experience is a masterclass in professional discipline. Observing how top-tier musicians organize their rehearsals, act in real-time on stage, and reflect on their performances, whether through quiet study or social decompression. has fundamentally reshaped her own approach. She credits these short but intense encounters with making her a significantly better chamber musician, viewing music-making as a process of reflecting everything in one’s environment.This summer, So returns to the Alps to explore the “complex and intricate” quartets of Raykhelson and Medtner. These relatively under-programmed works offer a fresh challenge, maintaining a sheer elegance that So is eager to bring to life alongside her peers. As she prepares for this latest chapter, she remains driven by the anticipation of how the Verbier community will continue to transform her artistry.Interviewed on May 2nd, 2025 at the Xinghai Concert Hall in Guangzhou, China. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

Between 2013 and 2015, I saw the final three operas of Wagner’s Ring cycle at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, conducted by Yu Feng, then Preisident of the China National Opera, and directed by Wang Huquan produced by the China National Opera. Because every leading role was sung by Chinese artists, the production quickly became known as the legendary “all-Chinese cast” Ring.For me, the significance of that project went far beyond novelty. It gave a generation of Chinese singers the rare opportunity to perform the complete Ring cycle, nurturing and establishing many of the country’s finest Wagnerians in the process. More importantly, it marked a historic breakthrough: a fully home-grown Chinese Ring production capable of standing on its own artistic merits.Yet after the new theatre of China National Opera was completed, this milestone production quietly disappeared from the company’s seasons. Over time, the “all-Chinese cast” Ring took on an almost mythical status - until Sunday evening at the Shanghai Symphony Hall, when Yu Feng returned with a hand-picked ensemble to present a three-hour concert version drawn from Die Walküre.Two bass-baritones were particularly remarkable. Most striking of all was the portrayal of Wotan, moving seamlessly from divine authority and rage to heartbreaking human vulnerability. In the third act, his farewell to Brünnhilde - sung by China’s leading Wagnerian soprano Wang Wei - was profoundly moving, the kind of performance that leaves the audience emotionally shattered.Under Yu Feng’s commanding direction, the combined force of Shanghai and Ninbo Symphony Orchestras recaptured the fire, discipline, and sheer dramatic intensity that defined the China National Opera Orchestra more than a decade ago. The refinement of the details was often breathtaking. When it comes to Wagner’s Ring, the national company still shows what the highest level of Chinese operatic forces can achieve.Hu Yifan, a guest of KLASSIKOM, shared her story performing and listening to Die Walküre.Filmed and interviewed on May 10, 2026 in Shanghai.This is a Chinese language programme with bilingual subtitles. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

Following her recent concert tour to Guangzhou and Beijing, violinist Paloma So is returning to the United States to continue her studies at Harvard University. While the transition from the concert hall to the classroom might seem like a leap, So views her Ivy League education as vital nutrition for her growth as a musician.Though she is an economics major, So’s academic interests are vast and varied. She actively takes classes in government department and romance languages, specifically French, and everything from Roman history to cosmology.For So, this interdisciplinary path is essential because she believes that to be a great musician, one must first be a well-informed, well-read, and well-rounded human being. This liberal arts education provides her with a broader perspective, allowing her to see music as a small but profound representation of humanity and art within a ginormous world.So describes Harvard as an incredible and unique community that provides inspiration beyond the classroom. She highlights the privilege of being exposed to top-tier professors and even the occasional lunch with a Nobel Prize winner. Her peer group is equally diverse, consisting of talented actors, writers, and athletes who may one day lead the world.Her typical day mirrors that of many students - attending classes, catching up on work, and reading on the lawn. However, her schedule has a musical edge. Every Tuesday, she travels to the New England Conservatory for her violin lessons. She prefers to practice in the evenings or at night, as that is when she feels her brain is most active and she has the most to say musically.While some might see a double interest in economics and music as a fork in the road, So’s career goals have been fixed since childhood. She has always known she wanted to be a professional soloist, noting that the violin brings her immense joy and fulfillment. Rather than distracting from her musical path, she sees Harvard as a supplement that helps shape her into the artist she hopes to become.Interviewed on May 2nd, 2026 at the Xinghai Concert Hall in Guangzhou. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

In a recent performance of Sergei Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 at the Xinghai Concert Hall with Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Charles Dutoit, soloist Paloma So appeared visibly captivated by the score, her expression reflecting an amusement and focus that mirrored the music's intricate joy. Described as truly "otherworldly," this concerto was originally conceived while the composer was immersed in the natural beauty of the Ural Mountains. In this teaser, So explores the vivid, wintry imagery she carries throughout the 21-minute work:Atmospheric Contrasts: The music ranges from "gorgeous snowscapes" with glistening icicles to the intensity of a mountain hailstorm.The Demonic Center: The unconventional second movement—a technical and "demonic" vivacissimo—serves as a sharp departure from the surrounding movements, channeling a sense of resentment toward the world.Folklore and Dreamscapes: The work is bookended by movements inspired by Russian folklore, designed to transport the listener into another dimension.Ultimately, So views the concerto as a means of escape, moving beyond the technical demands to find a space of pure transportation.Interviewed on May 2nd, 2026 in Guangzhou. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

After two months delay due to injury, Chopin Competition third prize winner Wang Zitong made her much anticipated recital debut at the Shanghai Oriental Art Centre to an almost full house.Filmed on May 4th, 2026. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

College student and English major Hu Yifan is a frequent guest of concerts, and an occasional stunt on opera stages playing muted roles like the little mermaid.Here's her take on the Jazz Spring lineup that featured six guitarists including expats Evgeny Pobozhiy and Ricardo Vogt.Accompanied by the big band named after Xu Zhihan, the programme paid tribute to jazz and guitar giants Wes Montgomery, Pat Martino, Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Guinga, Jesse van Ruller and Jim Hall.This is a Chinese language programme with Chinese subtitles.Filmed on May 3, 2026 at the West Bund Theatre in Shanghai, China. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

Twenty-year-old violinist Paloma So gave a recital at the Xinghai Concert Hall just one day after her appearance with Charles Dutoit and the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra performing Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1.In the recital she paired with pianist Rao Hao and played J.S. Bach, Szymanowski, Schubert, Prokofiev and Waxman. The duo encored a piece by Chinese composer Chen Gang.The programme will be repeated in Beijing in one week. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

Largely finished in the West, the conducting career of Charles Dutoit has taken off in China ever since, who appeared last night at the Xinghai Concert Hall conducting a programme of Ravel, Prokofiev and Mendelssohn with the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra.He was joined by Paloma So, the 20-year-old Harvard student in Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1.The same programme with be repeated in ten days in Beijing when Charles will conduct the China Philharmonic Orchestra with Paloma as the soloist.The large fanbase of the conductor in China can be best illustrated in the uninterrupted reel capturing the curtain call at the Xinghai Concert Hall after the concert last night. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

An exclusive sneak into the world premiere of Die Walküre in a new production by Katharina Wagner at the Shanghai Grand Theatre. Xu Zhong conducts the Suzhou Symphony Orchestra and members of the Bayteuth Festival Orchestra.They are joined by an international cast.Die Walküre, WWV 86b: 3. Aufzug: Vorspiel und 1. Szene: Hojotoho! Hojotoho! Heiaha! Heiaha!Filmed on April 26, 2026. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

Han Mo, known to many as Molly, spends her days in a rehearsal hall at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen). As a coach and piano teacher, she and her colleagues use two pianos to simulate a full symphonic orchestra for conducting students. It is a life defined by the rigorous architecture of classical music, yet her heart is often thousands of miles away, divided between the fractured landscapes of her past in Russia and the celestial silence of the stars.Molly’s connection to Russia is profound; she moved there at age twelve and eventually earned a doctorate, coming to consider the language almost a second mother tongue. But the Russia she remembers is changing under the weight of conflict. She describes a reality where the cost of living has doubled, with metro fares and apartment rents skyrocketing. Beyond the financial strain, a digital isolation has taken hold. Major social platforms and video sites are gone, replaced by less effective local alternatives, forcing her to connect with friends via Zoom or face the silence of Moscow’s “digital dark age”.For the musicians Molly knows, the world has become a complicated stage. She notes how legends like Gergiev and Matsuev have largely abandoned Western markets, while younger talents like Malofeev find themselves caught in the middle of a geopolitical tug-of-war. Others, like Pletnev, have made the difficult choice to leave the country entirely. To Molly, it is a reminder of history repeating itself, echoing the days when Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky sought refuge abroad. She observes that while music may be borderless, the musicians themselves are often weighted down by the “sin” of their nationality.To find clarity, Molly looks upward. A self-described astronomy enthusiast, her morning ritual begins not with the daily headlines, but with the NASA website. She was deeply moved by recent human missions to orbit the moon, finding solace in the perspective of a female astronaut who looked back at the Earth from the “infinite darkness”. That image of a solitary planet hanging in the void led to a singular realization: “Planet Earth, you are a crew”.In that cosmic view, Molly sees the ultimate symphony, a world where boundaries of race and nationality vanish. She questions why, if humans possess the capacity for peace and love, we do not choose it. As she closes her rehearsals, perhaps with the defiant chords of Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida” ringing in her mind, her message remains clear. Whether she is playing for a classroom in Shenzhen or tracking a satellite across the night sky, she is a member of that global crew, holding onto the hope that harmony can eventually transcend the noise of war.This is a Chinese language programme with Chinese subtitles.Filmed in Shenzhen on April 16, 2026. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

Music by Zhou Long was presented in an interactive lecture-concert at the Hangzhou Grand Theatre on Tuesday, as part of the Hangzhou Spring Music Festival.The event featured the composer’s String Quintet arrangement of Eight Chinese Folk Songs, introduced through a lecture outlining the musical ideas and cultural context behind the work, followed by a two-part performance. Admission to the concert was free, drawing an engaged audience.In a moment of lively interaction, first violinist Liu Yang encouraged listeners to join in with the well-known melody of “Fangma Shange,” prompting the audience to echo its rhythmic calls. The exchange brought the folk material to life, offering listeners a direct and participatory experience of the music’s origins.Filmed on April 14, 2026 in Hangzhou. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

A 16-year-old piano student from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music Affiliated Secondary School shared her reflections after attending a concert by conductor Ivor Bolton and pianist Chen Sa with the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra at the Shanghai Concert Hall on Friday.Ji Qin Yaoyao, a first-year high school student, described the performance - marking the 270th anniversary of Mozart - as both “unique” and inspiring. The programme featured operatic overtures, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K.466, and the Symphony No. 36 “Linz.”“The orchestra was highly professional and had its own distinctive character,” Ji said. “There was a strong sense of logic in the music, yet within that structure, they expressed individuality. The whole performance felt very natural and comfortable to listen to.”She highlighted Chen’s interpretation of the concerto, recalling a masterclass she attended with the pianist in 2021. “Her playing is both gentle and strong,” Ji said. “The touch reminded me of a dragonfly’s wings trembling over the surface of water - each note clear, rounded and full.”Ji added that Chen’s performance, along with her stage presence, left a lasting impression, reinforcing her admiration for the pianist as both a musician and mentor.Reflecting on Mozart’s music more broadly, the young pianist said she is drawn to its “spiritual quality” and often chooses Mozart’s concertos, sonatas and variations in her own performances and competitions.“For us as students, whether playing chamber music or solo, we must learn to listen - to others and to ourselves,” she said. “Only then can we create a performance that truly belongs to us.”Ji said the concert deepened her appreciation for Mozart and left her with insights she hopes to carry into her own musical journey.This is a Chinese language programme with Chinese subtitles.Filmed in Shanghai on April 11, 2026. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com

A new production of The Magic Flute, co-produced by the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg, was staged at the Shangyin Opera House Thursday to Sunday, with the final performance closing the 41st Shanghai Spring International Music Festival.Led by artistic directors Liao Changyong and Ludwig Holtmeier, the production features an elite German creative team, including director Alexander Schulin and conductor Marius Stieghorst, who leads the SCM Symphony Orchestra.The production marked what some critics described as a notable introduction of “restoration theatre” principles to a major Chinese opera stage. While not all scenic elements were realised through manual means, the staging demonstrated that its visual effects could, in principle, be achieved using traditional rope-driven stagecraft, with lighting as the primary modern approach.In contrast to the prevailing large-scale aesthetic often seen in domestic productions — characterised by extensive lighting, complex machinery and multimedia spectacle — the performance favoured a more restrained visual language, foregrounding theatrical illusion and craft over sheer technological and ego display.Critics said the closing-night production offered a different perspective on operatic staging in China, and expressed hope that it may prompt reflection among stage directors and cultural policymakers on the balance between technical resources and artistic expression. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com