Music Director: LÜ Jia  

Conductor Laureate: Zuohuang Chen

Assistant Conductors: LAI Jiajing, SUN Yifan

 

 

China NCPA Orchestra is the resident orchestra of the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), Beijing. Since its founding in 2010, the orchestra has fast established itself as one of the most adventurous and dynamic orchestras in the country and earned an international reputation through extensive performances abroad.

 

Artists associated with the orchestra include Zubin Mehta, Valery Gergiev, Myung-Whun Chung, Fabio Luisi, Christoph Eschenbach, Shao-Chia Lü, Xian Zhang, Rudolf Buchbinder, Lang Lang, Stephen Kovacevich, Yuja Wang, Jian Wang, Gautier Capucon, Kyung Wha Chung, Vadim Repin, Placido Domingo, Renee Fleming and Leo Nucci among many others. Lorin Maazel worked closely with the orchestra before his passing and praised the musicians for their “amazing professionalism and great passion in music”. 

 

The orchestra has gained critical acclaim for its performances in NCPA’s opera productions of not only classical repertoire such as Tristan and Isolde, Der Rosenkavalier, Tosca and Aida, but also newly commissioned works like The Rickshaw Boy, The Long March and The Jinsha River. In its own orchestral concert season, it has consistently presented creative and diverse programmes. The orchestra also gave the Chinese premieres of works by Toru Takemitsu, et al, commissioned and world premiered many works by Michael Gordon, Augusta Read Thomas, Qigang Chen, and ZHAO Jiping. Their performance of The Ring without Words with its creator, Lorin Maazel, was released on SONY Classics worldwide. In 2019, the orchestra’s recording of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 was awarded "Best Orchestral Album" at the 2018 Chinese Audiophile Vinyl Award. In 2021, the NCPAO released Beethoven’s Egmont, becoming the first Chinese orchestra to record this masterpiece. In celebration of the tenth anniversary of its Music Director LÜ Jia’s ongoing tenure, the orchestra released two albums in 2022, including Bruckner's Symphony No. 9 and a selection of live recordings conducted by LÜ Jia. In July 2023, the NCPAO released the recording of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 3.

 

Alongside its concert series, the orchestra has received widespread praise for its international appearances at the Kissingen Summer Music Festival and the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival and concerts in many cities in Germany, as well as in Sydney, Singapore, Seoul, Daegu, Abu Dhabi, Taipei and Macau. In 2014, the orchestra undertook its first North American tour and returned in 2017, where it performed at Carnegie Hall, Chicago Symphony Center, Davies Symphony Hall and other major venues in the US and Canada, under the baton of LÜ Jia. Musical America praised its “joyful confidence and youthful strength”. Concerto Net described it as “a polished, first rate ensemble”. April 2021 saw the orchestra complete their first six-city domestic tour, which Music Weekly praised as "a series of sophisticated programs in concerts that blew the roof off” followed by a second tour in March 2023.