Amid tense U.S.-China relations, Philadelphia Orchestra is making its way back to China and South Korea
The Philadelphians will travel to Beijing and Haikou after a South Korean leg that takes them to Incheon and Seoul.
U.S.-China relations ebb and flow, but over more than a half-century, the Philadelphia Orchestra has been a steadfast connector between the two countries. Since their first visit there in 1973 during the Nixon administration, the Philadelphians have notched a special status as the most frequent visitor to China among U.S. orchestras.
Next month, the ensemble will play China once again — its 14th visit — as part of a tour to Beijing and Haikou after a South Korean leg that takes them to Incheon and Seoul.
The orchestra’s China visits have traditionally served not just a musical function, but a diplomatic one as well.
In 2023, when 14 musicians from the orchestra traveled to China, feelings of goodwill percolated up to Chinese President Xi Jinping and other government leaders, then-U. S. ambassador to China, R. Nicholas Burns, said at the time. When Xi gave a speech the evening of a meeting with Pres. Biden, “he mentioned the Philadelphia Orchestra as one of the initiatives that had produced a better climate in the relationship,” Burns told The Inquirer.
This tour, from Nov. 5-15, includes four full-orchestra concerts in China. It will be the first visit by the full orchestra during the second Trump administration. Philadelphia Orchestra and Ensemble Arts president and CEO Ryan Fleur, who has worked on orchestra tours through several administrations since 2012, says the atmosphere is quite different from the last time the orchestra visited.
He says he has seen “firsthand when we’ve had extremely good relations with China, when we’ve had extremely bad relations with China and everything in between, and what I can tell you is that what we are experiencing right now, from a cultural diplomacy perspective, we definitely are feeling a thaw in relations in general.”
In terms of its activities on this trip, Fleur says the orchestra doesn’t yet fully know what to expect.
“One of the things about when we work in China is, a lot of things come to fruition at the last minute, so we don’t have a lot of the details of what’s happening, but I also know that we’ve been in conversations with a lot of the key partners.”
What Fleur does know for sure is that the orchestra will “bring folks in conversation together in ways that wouldn’t otherwise happen.”
In addition to the full-orchestra concerts, individual orchestra members will participate in various activities in Haikou, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Shanghai.
The orchestra’s nine concerts, ending Nov. 15 with its debut at the Beijing Performing Arts Center, will be led by principal guest conductor Marin Alsop. There are two soloists: Yunchan Lim in Korea, and Haochen Zhang in China.
Each pianist brings his own artistic resonance.
“Yunchan Lim won the Van Cliburn competition with Alsop conducting, so this has a lot of attention in Korea because this is the first time the two of them have worked together since that moment, so the concerts sold out instantly,” said Fleur.
In China, he says, there are three pianists with big profiles: Yuja Wang, Lang Lang, and Haochen Zhang. All three attended Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music.
“He’s very much viewed as the third pianist, and the fact that he lives in Philadelphia and lives in Shanghai has a lot of meaning in China,” said Fleur of Zhang. “So having that musical connection as well as featuring things that we do really well, and particularly in Beijing, will be meaningful.”
