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Contemporary programming at this year's festival brings a sensitive social issue close to home, culminating in Judith Markovich's “Oh, my son…” 

 The San Francisco Symphony wound up its Asian tour in Tokyo with a program (Sheng, Shostakovich, Mahler) and soloist (pianist Yuja Wang) well calculated to generate strong audience response.

Yuja Wang’s blazing Shostakovich First Piano Concerto and MTT’s stellar Firebird blended into a cohesive narrative at Davies Hall that showed us how successful performances can coincide with successful programming. 

A new operatic adaptation of Dream of the Red Chamber by Bright Sheng and David Henry Hwang offers musical and visual delights but stumbles on the text.

It is a wonderful thing to hear the full range and colour of a symphony orchestra used to its full effect during the course of an evening's programme and tonight the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Finnish conductor Sakari Oramo showed the diversity, versatility and sheer joy which for me really brings the music to life.

For the 40th anniversary season opening gala of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, it was fitting that Music Director Jaap van Zweden should have chosen Bright Sheng’s Shanghai Overture, which was originally commissioned by the composer’s alma mater, the Shanghai Conservatory, for its own 80th anniversary in 2007.