Photo: Courtesy of Shanghai Symphony Orchestra

 
Summer in Shanghai is hot and the Shanghai Symphony Hall will be hotter as the Music in the Summer Air festival kicked off on Friday night with the Light in the Universe concert.

Following the concept of the metaverse – "sound in the world, light in the universe" – the opening concert features pieces such as Three-Body Fantasy by Fay Kueen Wang, based on the songs "A Matter of Time" and "The Day of Unknown" by Chen Xueran and inspired by writer Liu Cixin’s epic sci-fi work, Elliot Leung’s Symphony No.1 The Metaverse and The Planets by Gustav Holst. 

This year’s festival, which runs from Friday through July 20, will see 30 music performances from old friends and young talented musicians, including BBC's Young Musician 2020 percussionist Zhang Fang  and violinist Rino Yoshimoto from the latest Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition.

The closing concert, under the baton of the orchestra’s artistic director Yu Long, will see legendary 82-year-old pianist Yin Chengzong play the famous "Yellow River" piano concerto, a piece that Yin arranged based on the "Yellow River Cantata" (1939) and that has been performed in many Western theaters since the 1980s.