Maestro Yu Long will take the baton of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra for the concert at the Imperial Ancestral Temple in Beijing on Oct 10. [Photo provided to China Daily]

The world's oldest classical music label will mark its 120th anniversary this year with a series of high-profile events, Chen Nan reports.

Deutsche Grammophon, the world's oldest and one of the most renowned classical music labels, will celebrate its 120th anniversary this year.

Among the international programs to mark the special year, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra will perform a concert at the site of Beijing's historical Imperial Ancestral Temple, which stands just outside the Forbidden City, on Oct 10.

Under the baton of maestro Yu Long, SSO will open the concert with a special arrangement of Chinese composer Liu Tianhua's work, Enchanted Night.

Then the orchestra will perform German composer Carl Orff's Carmina Burana with Russian soprano Aida Garifullina, British tenor Toby Spence and French baritone Ludovic Tezier, before being joined by French pianist Helene Grimaud for Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major.

Norwegian violinist Mari Samuelsen will then take the solo lead in November from neo-classical composer Max Richter's Memoryhouse, a seminal work of contemporary neoclassical composition in 2002.

It will be the first classical music event to be held at the site since 1998, when it held a performance of Turandot, conducted by Zubin Mehta.

"I am thrilled that DG will start its anniversary year with a genuinely historic event in Beijing. It is sure to inspire millions of young people in China and give momentum to the rise of a vast audience here and across the world," says Clemens Trautmann, the president of DG, in Shanghai, adding that millions will be able to watch the concert on TV and digital media online.

Speaking about the repertoire for the concert, Trautmann says the program brings together a wide range of music from different eras and from composers in different countries.

He says the lyrics of Carmina Burana are from a 13th-century manuscript discovered in a Bavarian monastery and are thus from an era when the Forbidden City was built.

Yu, China's well-known conductor on the international scene, and SSO have signed a contract with DG in Berlin, where it is headquartered, to become the first Chinese conductor and orchestra to join the label.

Their first DG recording will be released in 2019 to mark the 140th anniversary of SSO, the oldest symphony orchestra in China.

Speaking about the deal, Yu says: "Even as we are announcing the news of the upcoming Beijing concert, the orchestra is working hard on recording its debut DG album."

One of the pieces in the recording will be Chinese composer Chen Qigang's La Joie de la souffrance for Violin and Orchestra, featuring Grammy-winning Russian violinist Maxim Vengerov.

The Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, as the poster informs, will perform a concert at the site of Beijing's Imperial Ancestral Temple to mark Deutsche Grammophon's 120th anniversary. [Photo provided to China Daily]

The piece was commissioned for the Beijing Music Festival and premiered at last year's closing concert of the event.

Another piece that will feature in the album is Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dance.

Speaking about the project, Yu says: "The album will establish a dialogue between Chinese and European orchestral music."

The idea of collaborating with Yu and SSO took shape when Trautmann met Yu at the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland last summer.

Trautmann says: "I believe that it is one of the most advanced and internationalized orchestras in China," adding that DG has been part of China's music scene for over 100 years, and that Shanghai was one of the first Chinese cities that opened up to the Western world.

The history of the SSO dates back to 1879 when it was known as the Shanghai Public Band.

In 1922, it was renamed the Shanghai Municipal Orchestra. And it was under Italian conductor Mario Paci that the orchestra promoted Western music and trained young Chinese musicians.

Yu, 54, who was born into a musically-inclined family in Shanghai, studied at the Shanghai Conservatory followed by Berlin's Hochschule de Kunste.

In early 1990s, Yu returned home and founded the Beijing Music Festival in 1998 followed by the China Philharmonic Orchestra in 2000. And he has been the artistic director of SSO since 2009.

As for DG, its story goes back to the birth of recording.

In June 1898, the company was founded in Hanover along with the first record and gramophone manufacturing works. And its director was Emile Berliner, the Hanover-born American inventor of both the disc and the player.

Now, DG is a part of the Universal Music Group, the world's largest record company.

As for the other events marking the anniversary, Garand Wu, the managing director of Universal Music China, says that besides the concert there will be three performances at Beijing's National Centre for the Performing Arts over Nov 18-20 by the Berlin Staatskapelle and the Israeli-Argentinian maestro Daniel Barenboim.

DG will also introduce its project, Yellow Lounge, to the country with a performance at Beijing's Mao Livehouse featuring British-Irish classical violinist Daniel Hope, Chinese clarinetist Wang Tao and the Zurich Chamber Orchestra.

DG's Yellow Lounge project, which aims to introduce clubbers to live classical music, was born in 2001 in Berlin's techno clubs. And since then, Yellow Lounge has organized over 130 club nights, each attracting up to 1,000 guests and a massive traditional and social media following.

"Yellow Lounge takes classical music to the younger generation. After Beijing we will take it to other Chinese cities," says Wu.

Speaking about DG's future, Trautmann says it will keep alive the tradition of the label, especially when it comes to building long-term relationships with musicians worldwide and attracting younger audiences.

"The inventor of the gramophone and the founder of the world's oldest record label, Emil Berliner, brought music into everyday life. And we still use the latest technology to bring music to people."