KLASSIKOM=Innovations in classical music

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 w...

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...

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 publi...

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 l...

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 conce...

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 “u...

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, includi...

Huanglou Jazz Club in Hangzhou threw a swing party with music performed by vocalist Hetty Kate, Alec Haavik on the saxophone, Michael Compton on the keyboard, Harrison Wardley on the bass and Charles Foldesh on the drums. Filmed on April 6th, 2026 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes...

Liao Changyong, the celebrated baritone and President of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music (SCM), unveiled an evolved new chapter of the “Chinese Art Song Centenary” series last night at Shanghai’s He Luting Concert Hall. Marking the sixth installment since the project’s inception six years ago, the recital featured the Shanghai debut of the Shangyin Soloists. This chamber ensemble provided a ric...

Shanghai and Beijing based keyboardist and songwriter Strucky Yi performs at JZ Club in Shanghai with his quartet and remembers the hardship of musicians during Covid-19 in his own music composed from 2020-22 while studying in the United States. JZ Club ShanghaiApril 1, 2026 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kl...

Under the baton of Hu Yongyan, MD of Anhui Orchestra, the symphony orchestra performed an outreach programme at the University of Science and Technology of China on the evening of March 26, 2026, with music by Beethoven including the first and final movements of the Symphony No. 5, and the third movement of the Piano Concerto No. 5. The soloist is Li Yuemeng. This is the first UMusic programme pre...

For a touring musician, the rhythm of life is usually dictated by the metronome and the concert schedule. But for pianist Xue Yingjia, a faculty member of the Hong Kong Chinese University (Shenzhen) School of Music, the tempo was suddenly shattered by the opening salvos of a distant war. What was supposed to be a triumphant journey home from a three-nation tour turned into a 60-hour odyssey across...

On the evening of 19 March, a concert dedicated to the teaching legacy of renowned composer Ye Xiaogang took place at the Concert Hall of the School of Music at Chinese University of Hong Kong Shenzhen School of Music. Titled Ye Xiaogang Pedagogical Legacy Concert , the event brought together thirteen works by Ye and nine fellow composers, performed in a continuous programme without intermission....

A conversation with pianist Yisa Lü reveals how the war in Iran and the Middle East has impacted the classical music industry and the life of a piano teacher half a globe away from Ground Zero. This is a Chinese language programme without subtitle. Interviewed in Hangzhou on March 11th, 2026 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus e...

A conversation with pianist Yisa Lü reveals how appearance, expectation and respect collide in today’s concert culture. In classical music, the concert stage has long been regarded as a place where sound matters more than appearance. Technique, interpretation and musicianship are supposed to outweigh everything else. Yet in today’s performance market, where social media, visual culture and commerc...

This is a Chinese language programme without subtitles. During her years studying in Italy, soprano Song Qian, now the prima donna of the Shanghai Opera House, experienced a number of challenges living abroad, including incidents of theft and robbery. On one occasion, while walking at night and speaking on her mobile phone, the phone was suddenly snatched by a man she recalls as being nearly 1.9 m...

The third concert of the Americas tour by the Chamber Ensemble of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen) School of Music, led by Professor Ye Xiaogang, was held on February 27th at the recital hall of Departamento de Artes Musicales y Sonoras (DAMuS) affiliated with the Universidad Nacional de las Artes UNA, Argentina. Among the distinguished guests in attendance were Wang Wei, Chinese Amb...

The second concert of the Americas tour by the Chamber Ensemble of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen) School of Music, led by Professor Ye Xiaogang, was held at the 700-seat Palacio de Bellas Artes in Santo Domingo, capital of the Dominican Republic on the evening of February 24th. The event drew a distinguished audience that included government officials, and the hall was filled with...

Today the touring ensembke from CUHKMus found itself far from the concert hall, wandering through the historic old quarter of Santo Domingo, capital of the Dominican Republic. Cobblestone streets, pastel façades, and the steady hum of Caribbean life set the scene. At Columbus Square, beneath the open sky, a street violinist was playing - his melody floating easily through the warm summer air. The...

On the afternoon of the 20th, from 1 to 3 p.m., Professor Ye Xiaogang addressed faculty and students, primarily from the composition department, at Studio 512 of the Conservatory of Music of the University of Missouri–Kansas City, where his touring delegation had just arrived. Speaking entirely in English, Ye shared reflections on navigating different creative contexts: from the freedom of purely...

At the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, an unique Guanyin sculpture stands as one of the institution’s most treasured masterpieces. Ye Xiaogang, composer of the television drama Jade Guanyin and the violin rhapsody of the same title, slowed his pace as he approached the wooden Bodhisattva figure, carved during China’s Jin dynasty. The encounter felt like a moment of quiet recognition across centuries....

Led by Ye Xiaogang, a delegation of fourteen performers, administrators, and composer-representatives from the Shenzhen Conservatory of Music at the Chinese University of Hong Kong converged from Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Seoul before crossing hemispheres - from East to West - to San Francisco. After lengthy delays, they arrived in Kansas City late last night. Their purpose was cle...

The 54th Istanbul Music Festival will return from 11 to 25 June 2026 with an ambitious programme uniting leading orchestras, acclaimed soloists and bold new commissions under the theme “Here & Now.” Organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) and sponsored by Borusan Holding, the festival stands as Türkiye’s longest-established classical music event and one of the region’s mos...

Interview conducted on March 17, 2025, in Bergen during the Borealis Festival. This is a Chinese language programme without subtitles. KLASSIKOM: Please introduce yourself and tell us about your latest work. Tze Yeung Ho: My name is He Ziyang (Tze Yeung Ho). I am a composer working primarily in Norway and Finland; my parents are from Hong Kong. Recently, my opera Nara , for which I wrote the music...

This is a Chinese language programme without subtitles. Yan Siyi likes to joke that she became a conductor by accident. The 20-something musician from Shaxian, a small county in Sanming, Fujian province, did not grow up dreaming of standing before a symphony orchestra. She studied piano in secondary school. During preparations for conservatory entrance exams, she became interested in composition....