On beethoven's back

The Vienna Symphony orchestra is going to make its debut on the Chinese mainland in June, collaborating with high-profile conductor Simone Young to serve up a classical music feast of authentic Viennese flavor.

The 114-year-old orchestra will kick off its tour to six cities with a Beethoven night at Xinghai Concert Hall in Guangzhou on June 2. The Austrian orchestra's repertoire for its China tour features masterpieces from German and Austrian composers from the classical and romantic periods, including Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Brahms.

They were all closely connected to Vienna, composing and debuting their works in the capital of classical music.

"We are a Viennese orchestra, so we want to bring the Chinese audience the traditional, Viennese orchestral sound that we are especially good at on our debut," Johannes Neubert, the orchestra's managing director, says in a phone interview.

The Vienna Symphony is one of the city's three major orchestras, the other two being the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. It is a latecomer to the fast-growing classical music market in China: The Vienna Philharmonic first visited the country in 1973 and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2001.

"I was surprised that the orchestra had never been to the mainland when I took over the job as the managing director three years ago and we started to plan a tour," Neubert says.

"China has the most dynamic development of classical music, with so many wonderful concert halls newly built and symphony orchestras rising to high levels."

With an increasing number of visiting world-class orchestras, China has become an attractive new market for classical music and even "has the potential to become the world's largest consumer for classical music", according to Yu Xinzhi, project director of the Vienna Symphony's show at the Xinghai Concert Hall.

"Many orchestras that have visited our hall told me that they are surprised at the big number of younger audience members, while a symphony concert overseas attracts mostly older people," Yu says.

Good venues can not only attract visiting orchestras but also greatly support the local orchestras' development. Neubert says that he believes that China has big potential to become "an orchestral music center equally important as Europe in the 21st century".

"China is the country in Asia that has a long history of authentic orchestral music," he says, both in Western and Chinese styles.

Italian conductor Mario Paci expanded the brass band Shanghai Public Band, founded in 1879, into an orchestra in 1919 and extensively introduced Western orchestral music to China. That orchestra was the predecessor of Shanghai Symphony Orchestra.