SSO hall | Der Freischütz highlights on 22 August, and two more concerts in the same halls now on sale

Beyond the orchestra's own season, both halls at the Shanghai Symphony Hall are rented out. Those concerts never reach the season book, but they sit alongside season concerts in the same ticketing system. All three below are on sale and were not previously listed here.

22 August | Der Freischütz, highlights

2026 is both the 240th anniversary of Weber's birth and the 200th of his death. Shanghai Opera House takes Der Freischütz apart for one evening: the overture, then the opera's central numbers in narrative order — despair, temptation, faith, redemption — act by act, with the musicologist Wang Yong introducing each from the stage.

First heard in Berlin in 1821, Der Freischütz is where German Romantic opera starts. The overture, the huntsmen's chorus and Agathe's two arias turn up on concert programmes often enough alone; hearing them back in order is a different evening, and the Wolf's Glen scene puts the whole incantation in the orchestra.

Zhang Chengjie conducts the Shanghai Opera House Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, with Yu Haolei, Song Qian, Jiang Jingyue and Huang Junpeng. Main hall, 19:30, ¥80–580.

29 August | Cai Donghua's Guoyue Theatre

Nine rhapsodies staged as one continuous evening, each scored differently: a tango for two pipa and percussion, a Chu Ci setting for bamboo flute and piano, a Dunhuang dream for guzheng and piano, a pipa-cello-percussion piece called Hero, Fire. After the interval the ensemble grows piece by piece. Hua Yifei conducts.

The chamber hall seats around three hundred, which is the scale at which every instrument in a Chinese ensemble stays audible. 19:15, ¥80–380.

5 November | Boldachev and Peng Jingxuan

The harp and the guzheng come from the same root; one travelled west, one stayed. The Swiss-Russian harpist Alexander Boldachev and the guzheng player Peng Jingxuan put both on one stage: the first half runs from "High Mountains, Flowing Water" and Bach through Chopin, Vivaldi, Rossini and Tchaikovsky; the second turns contemporary. It is built as duo playing and exchange throughout. Main hall, 19:30, ¥80–380.

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