Paloma So’s Harvard Journey

China National Symphony Orchestra Breaks Ground on New Headquarters

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 [https://klassikom.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Mahler und die fahrenden Gesellen aus China

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 [https://klassikom.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

A German Ear Listens to China — and Likes What It Hears

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 [https://klassikom.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Trailblazing Concert Hall Stands Strong

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 [https://klassikom.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Prolonged Silence at Mahler Ninth

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 [https://klassikom.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]