Stringing together an outstanding new season

Across genres and works, the season will explore enduring questions about time, farewell, humanity, the relationship between people and the natural world, and how a finite life can attain spiritual permanence, Lyu adds.

Those questions unfold along three main threads: encounters between poetry and music across time, new perspectives on Beethoven, and the continuing creation and performance of Chinese works.

Among the highlights is the world premiere of Poems of Hai Zi, composed by Guo Wenjing and based on the poetry of Hai Zi (1964-1989), one of the most influential Chinese poets of the 1980s.

Zhang Yi will conduct Tchaikovsky's Manfred, a four-scene symphony in B Minor inspired by Lord Byron's 1817 poem of the same name.

"For these two works, the connection is more about humans' relationship with the world, nature and existence," says Tang Ning, the NCPA's head of program operations. "Together, the two works bring different literary traditions into a conversation about the human experience."