The Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra (SPO; Chinese: 上海爱乐乐团; pinyin: Shànghǎi Àiyuè Yuètuán) is a professional
symphony orchestra
An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families.
There are typically four main sections of instruments:
* bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, ce ...
based in
Shanghai
Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...
, China. It is under the administration of the Shanghai Municipal Administration of Culture, Radio, Film, and TV. The current music director is
Muhai Tang
Muhai Tang (; born 1949 in Shanghai) is a Chinese conductor. He is the youngest son of celebrated Chinese film director Tang Xiaodan and brother of painter and poet Tang Muli.
Tang initially learned music with his parents, and later studied ...
and the deputy director is the young conductor Liang Zhang.
History
According to the orchestra's official web site, the orchestra was re-structured based on the former Shanghai Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra (SBSO). SBSO was merged from two orchestras – Shanghai Film Orchestra, which was established in 1954 and Shanghai Broadcasting Orchestra, which was established in 1950. The merge happened in 1996, and the new orchestra was named Shanghai Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra with Yongyan Hu as its first music director. The name of the orchestra was officially changed to the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra in April 2004 with famous conductor Zuohuang Chen as its Music Director, adopting the world’s most prevalent system of music seasons.
When
Muhai Tang
Muhai Tang (; born 1949 in Shanghai) is a Chinese conductor. He is the youngest son of celebrated Chinese film director Tang Xiaodan and brother of painter and poet Tang Muli.
Tang initially learned music with his parents, and later studied ...
took over the music director position in 2009, he told the journalist that the orchestra was not going to focus on overseas. Tang said they had to consider why the audience would like to listen to the music and how they could play the music well. He believed that the orchestra should be based on Chinese cultural values.
Repertoire
The SPO plays in neighborhood concerts, concerts promoting youthful Chinese soloists or Chinese composers, and concerts related to government activities, but they also perform challenging repertoire. In the 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 concert seasons they performed a series of
Mahler symphonies,
Bartók's ''
Bluebeard's Castle'', and a condensed version of
Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...
's ''
Ring Cycle
(''The Ring of the Nibelung''), WWV 86, is a cycle of four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. The works are based loosely on characters from Germanic heroic legend, namely Norse legendary sagas and the ''Nibelung ...
''. From 2015, upon close cooperation with the
Shanghai Conservatory of Music, SPO has hosted
Hearing China concert series and commissioned composers around the world to compose for SPO and Chinese instruments.
The orchestra has also made recordings. Most of these were orchestrated Chinese music and classical music composed by Chinese composers, made with the labels under
Naxos such as Marco Polo, Yellow River and Naxos itself.
See also
*
Shanghai Symphony Orchestra
References
External links
Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra official web site
{{authority control
China orchestras
Musical groups established in 1996
Culture in Shanghai