SHOAC | Li Hui and the Pipa Dance Chamber Ensemble on 28 November, three of the ten works are premieres

28 November, 19:45, in SHOAC's Recital Hall: one concert in the Elegant Chinese Music of Shanghai series, titled Pipa Poetics. Li Hui, professor at the Central Conservatory of Music, brings the Pipa Dance Chamber Ensemble to play ten works. Tickets went on sale at 15:39 on 18 August in three bands: 180, 280 and 320 yuan.

Li Hui founded the ensemble at the Central Conservatory in 2007. Its players are her former students, now holding posts at the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra, the China National Traditional Orchestra, the China National Song and Dance Ensemble, the Xi'an Conservatory and the Central Conservatory. The group does one thing above all: it commissions new pipa ensemble music and gives the first performances. Its 2018 record was the first album by a pipa chamber ensemble, and a second, Lord of the Clouds, is due this year, carrying Liu Tianqi's piece of that name from this very programme.

Three world premieres

Yu Yitong's Plain Strings, for pipa and guqin; Wang Rui's Rainbow Skirt, Feathered Robe; and Liu Tianqi's Startled Swan. All three are first performances.

Of the other seven, two are by Li Bochan: the pipa quartet Quietly, Op. 38, written in 2015, and Late Autumn for pipa and piano. Chen Si'ang's Cantonese Tone Pictures builds a quartet on three Cantonese tunes. Wang Yunfei's Wusheng, for seven pipas, stages a Peking opera fight scene and uses the right hand to imitate the opera's percussion. At the centre sits the ancient Moonlit Night on the Spring River in Gu Guanren's arrangement for five pipas, which divides across the group what one instrument normally carries alone.

The presenter published the programme marked "subject to change on the night", so the final order and contents may differ. Neither the running time nor whether there is an interval has been announced.

Two more are selling, and nobody has said who plays one of them

The 2027 New Year Countdown Concert runs at 22:30 on 31 December in the Oriental Opera Hall, six price bands from 180 to 680 yuan, on sale since 4 August. That is the whole of what has been published. No orchestra has been named, no programme, no conductor or soloist. The poster carries the title, the time, the hall and the presenter's mark, and nothing else.

The Vienna Klangwelt Symphony Orchestra plays its own New Year concert in SHOAC's concert hall the same night, at a different hour, and that one does name its orchestra.

Baroque and Tango: Vivaldi and Piazzolla plays on 1 October at 19:45 in the Recital Hall, three bands at 100, 200 and 300 yuan, on sale since 19 August. Until today this site carried its date and its hall but no price and no way to buy a ticket. That is now fixed.

See everything at the SHOAC Recital Hall on Shanghai Concerts