Paloma So on the Transformative Power of Verbier

The Rise of Female Force in Jazz

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

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]