Shanghai Symphony presents the New Year's Concert on Wednesday. [Photo provided to Chinadaily.com.cn]
Shanghai Symphony Orchestra presented the 2026 Shanghai New Year's Concert, featuring five rising stars, on New Year's Eve.
Conducted by Yu Long, music director of SSO, the concert at Shanghai Symphony Hall brought together soprano Dai Ziyi, pianist Serena Wang, violinist Chloe Chua, cellist LiLa and viola player Lin Yixiu. The four instrumentalists were all born in the new millennium, while Dai, the singer, was born in 1996.
Maestro Yu Long conducts the Shanghai New Year's Concert. [Photo provided to Chinadaily.com.cn]
The evening started with Johann Strauss II's beloved Waltz composition Voices of Spring, and went on with works of Tchaikovsky, Waxman and Paganini. It concluded with four pieces from the Gadfly Suite by Dmitri Shostakovich, echoing SSO's big plan to record the completed collection of Shostakovich symphonies in four music seasons.
SSO launched the Shanghai New Year's Concert in 2009. In the past 17 years, the annual concert has become one of the most influential cases among the 50 best cultural brands of Shanghai.
Soprano Dai Ziyi performs at the Shanghai New Year's Concert. [Photo provided to Chinadaily.com.cn]
Shanghai being the cradle of classical music in China, saw many Chinese musicians embarking their international career from here, Yu said before the concert.
"At SSO, we care very much about the young musicians. They are the real future," he said. The best way to support these emerging talents, he believed, was to offer them the opportunity to perform at important occasions such as the Shanghai New Year's Concert. These young musicians "are as brilliant as any established artists," Yu said.
Pianist Wang Yalun. [Photo provided to Chinadaily.com.cn]
Dai, the soprano, just concluded her contract with the Zurich Opera House in Switzerland, and hopes to shift the focus of her career to China this year. This was the second time she collaborated with SSO, after the Chinese opera Lu Xun premiered in September.
Eighteen-year-old violinist Chua is from Singapore and won a series of international competitions since she was 10. Her latest recording Mozart: Violin Concertos, released in July, topped the classical music chart on Apple Music.
Lin, the viola player, won the first prize of the sixth Tokyo International Viola Competition in June. She hopes to introduce the viola, a less famous member of the string instruments' family, to wider public.
Viola player Lin Yixiu. [Photo provided to Chinadaily.com.cn]
Cellist LiLa. [Photo provided to Chinadaily.com.cn]
Violinist Chloe Chua. [Photo provided to Chinadaily.com.cn]
