Stringing together an outstanding new season

The resident orchestra of Beijing's National Centre for the Performing Arts, the NCPA Orchestra, opened its 2026-27 season on Sept 26 with music that crosses centuries and cultures, pairing Tang Dynasty (618-907) poet Bai Juyi's Pipa Xing, one of China's best-known classical poems, with Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth). This work reflects on human mortality, the passing of time, and the tension between the beauty of life and the inevitability of death.

These themes of life, time and the human experience also provide a thread running through the orchestra's new season titled "Ode to the Earth".

Across the 2026-27 season, the orchestra brings together works ranging from Beethoven and Mahler to contemporary Chinese composers, exploring the different ways music speaks to the world.

Unveiled in Beijing on Sept 16, the lineup features seven operas, 28 orchestral concert programs and 14 chamber music programs, totaling 96 performances.

Eighteen guest conductors and more than 50 acclaimed soloists and singers from China and abroad join the orchestra, creating a musical dialogue between classical and contemporary, and China and the world.

"We hope to build bridges between classical masterpieces and contemporary creations, and between Eastern sensibility and an international perspective," says Lyu Jia, the orchestra's music director and conductor who performed at the new season's opening concert alongside poetry reciter Li Lihong, German mezzo-soprano Anna Werle, and tenor Simon O'Neill of New Zealand.