China’s newest export hit is classical music

NEXT month New York’s David Geffen Hall will welcome a visiting orchestra, on a tour including other top venues in Los Angeles and San Francisco. But the guest orchestra is not the Berlin Philharmonic or one of Europe’s other esteemed ensembles. It is the China Philharmonic Orchestra (CPO), which was founded in Beijing a mere 16 years ago.

The CPO is hardly the only Chinese ensemble touring the West. This year’s Budapest Spring Festival featured Puccini’s “Turandot”, about a cold-hearted Chinese princess, performed by musicians from the China National Opera House in Beijing. In August the Shanghai Opera performed “Thunderstorm”, a newly adapted Western-style Chinese work, at London’s Coliseum. Next year the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra will tour prestigious European festivals. Once, classical music generally travelled from the West to the rest. Now China is reversing the exchange, not merely performing Western classical music in China, but exporting it.