Mozart meets Chinese rock

What happens when Mozart meets Chinese rock pioneer Cui Jian, when the 300-year-old George Frideric Handel opera Giulio Cesare in Egitto (Julius Caesar in Egypt) makes its Chinese debut, and when a sitar speaks alongside a Western orchestra?

When October winds sweep through Beijing, the answers will unfold.

For 12 days, from Oct 9 to 20, the 29th Beijing Music Festival will turn concert halls, theaters and even public spaces into stages for a musical conversation spanning centuries, continents and genres.

This year's festival will place Mozart at its heart, while making room for everything from Baroque opera and late-Romantic symphonies to rock, Indian classical music and performances by a new generation of musicians.

The occasion is especially fitting: 2026 marks the 270th anniversary of Mozart's birth.

"His music was the popular music of his time. Everyone loved listening to it," says conductor Yu Long, chairman of the festival's artistic committee, who founded the annual classical music event in 1998.

Yu has a particular affection for Mozart's two G-minor symphonies: Symphony No 25 in G Minor, K 183, composed in 1773, when Mozart was 17, and Symphony No 40 in G Minor, K 550, composed in 1788, when Mozart was 32. For Yu, their apparent simplicity is precisely what makes them so demanding.

"His musical language is plain and unadorned, but extremely difficult to perform. It is like a mirror; whatever state the performers are in, the music reflects it honestly. There is nowhere for affectation to hide," he says.

Mozart will be heard across much of the festival, beginning with the opening concert at the National Centre for the Performing Arts. The festival orchestra will be led by 90-year-old Swiss conductor Charles Dutoit, with Russian pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja as soloist, in Mozart's Piano Concerto No 22 and Italian composer Ottorino Respighi's Roman Trilogy.

The festival will also welcome the London Philharmonic Orchestra as its orchestra-in-residence. Led by principal conductor Edward Gardner, the ensemble will bring a distinctly British voice to the festival, appearing in a series of concerts ranging from Mendelssohn and Brahms to Mozart and Mahler.

Among the highlights is a concert pairing Mendelssohn's Symphony No 3 in A Minor, Op 56, with Mozart's Symphony No 40 in G Minor, K 550, with baritone Liao Changyong performing four arias from Mozart's masterpiece, The Marriage of Figaro.

Mozart's Piano Concerto No 20 will be performed by German pianist Gerhard Oppitz, before the program turns to Brahms' Symphony No 2. Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu will lead the Singapore Symphony Orchestra in Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola, followed by Mahler's Symphony No 1.