Audiences are used to standout performances at the Beijing Music Festival – China’s leading classical music and cultural event. But 2024 raised the bar further still. As the dust settles on the 27^th and most ambitious edition of the festival yet, participants, stakeholders and the public can look back at an event that celebrated diversity and excellence in classical music and jazz while consolidating BMF’s standing on the international music scene.

This year’s festival, which ran from 5 to 13 October under the title ‘Voices from Afar,’ welcomed artists of varied ethnic, cultural and musical backgrounds to the Chinese capital. Some were icons of the performing arts, others promising young talents at the start of their careers. Included in the programme were the Chinese premiere of George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess and the Asian premiere of Andy Akiho’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated Seven Pillars. Featured artists included Gautier Capuçon, Tan Dun, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Hélène Grimaud, Shengan Hu, the Salzburg Camerata and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra under its pioneering leader Wynton Marsalis.  

'The capacity to bring world artists together,' Beijing's infrastructure makes it unique, along with a 'hungry and curious audience' | Photo: Beijing Music Festival

Standout performances from such renowned figures, combined with the Chinese capital’s superlative performing arts infrastructure, continue to ensure that BMF remains in the top league of international performing arts events. But this year’s programming notably emphasised Beijing’s status as a global capital, spreading across classical, contemporary and jazz with an emphasis on works that have pushed genre boundaries and created links across cultural borders.

Few works can do that like Porgy and Bess, an opera in the European tradition grown in the soil of Black America’s soul and blues music. Noah Naamat’s production at the Poly Theatre, with Kazem Abdullah conducting the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, made a big impact and strengthened links between the co-producers, Cape Town Opera and the KT Wong Foundation. It was preceded by a rousing evening of traditional African choral music, sung by the Chorus of Cape Town Opera in the stunning surroundings of the Temple of Heaven.

Andy Akiho’s landmark percussion work Seven Pillars, first performed in 2021, extends the scope of percussion composition across 11 movements that embrace varied global and traditional musical influences. Performed at the Forbidden City Concert Hall by Sandbox Percussion, for whom the piece was written, Seven Pillars was an undoubted festival highlight. The composer received the Festival’s 2024 Young Artist of the Year Award.

There are countless ways in which Akiho’s work reflects the values of the Beijing Music Festival itself – its innovation, its embracing of various traditions and nationalities, and its demanding of excellence from the performers and engagement from the audience. It could only happen in Beijing, China’s premier music hub whose domestic scene, international reach and superlative infrastructure have the capacity to bring world artists together. The city’s hungry, curious audience yet again proved itself ready to be challenged by music that embraces new sounds.

Noah Naamat’s production of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess at the Poly Theatre | Photo: Beijing Music Festival

Since its founding in 1998 by the powerhouse Chinese conductor Long Yu, the Beijing Music Festival has aimed to link Western and Eastern traditions through music. Tan Dun, whose music occupies the fault lines between both worlds, conducted his own spellbinding work Whispers of Winds and Birds with the China Philharmonic Orchestra in a spectacular opening concert that also combined the sounds of Stravinsky, Mozart and Ravel with Chinese folk music.

Later in the festival Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Gautier Capuçon collaborated in Richard Dubugnon’s double concerto for piano and cello Eros Athanatos with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, while Lu Yiwen was the soloist in a performance of Zhou Long’s Jiu Ge, a concerto for erhu and orchestra, under conductor Yi Huang.

The concerto for erhu, a traditional Chinese instrument with two strings, has 11 movements that reflect the roles of various Chinese mythological characters. The Beijing Music Festival, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, and the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra jointly commissioned the concerto.

Continuing the festival theme of music for percussion, the Xuzhou-born, Beijing-trained percussionist Shengan Hu, who went on to study in Graz and Berlin and returned to China as a guest professor at the Xinghai Conservatory of Music, gave a festive concert for children and their families. 

Only the arts can provide such a varied landscape of experiences while proving a potent force for humanitarian good across languages and borders. Another triumphant Beijing Music Festival has proved that.

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