John Nelson conducts Weber, Zhanhao, Gang, Saint-Saëns, and Dvořák — With Yi-Jia Susanne Hou

Live from Beijing's National Centre for the Performing Arts, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra presents a program that pays hommage to the rich cultural bridges between China and the West. The program opens with Weber's Overture to his little-known Romantic opera Oberon, a dazzling work that anticipates Mendelssohn's own fairy-inspired A Midsummer Night's Dream. Next come two virtuosic works for violin and orchestra: Saint-Saëns' Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso and He Zhanhao and Chen Gang's Butterfly Lovers' Violin Concerto, a one-movement work of Chinese traditional music composed for Western orchestra. The two works are performed by the brilliant and cosmopolitan Yi-Jia Susanne Hou—a virtuoso violinist born in China, raised in Mississauga, Ontario, and trained at the Juilliard School. The program closes with Dvořák's beloved Symphony No. 9 in E minor, "From the New World", Op. 95, a work that testifies to the beauty that comes from art inspired multiple cultural traditions.