Bringing music to gourmets

It will be one of the rare occasions in Beijing when haute cuisine meets haute culture when China World Summit Wing hosts a festive New Year's concert for guests. Chen Nan and Li Fusheng report.

There is every likelihood that you will be handed a musical program instead of a menu on New Year's Day at Beijing's China World Summit Wing Hotel. In fact, you can count on it to be the feast to start the year - a bountiful banquet for the senses. Working with the Central Conservatory of Music's EOS Repertoire Orchestra, the hotel will present music aficionados with a chance to enjoy a classical repertoire from celebrated composers, such as Peter Tchaikovsky, Johann Strauss II and Franz Schubert.

"I love music. It is the food of the spirit," general manager Thomas Schmitt-Glaeser says as he supervises the transformation of the 81-story hotel's huge pillar-free ballroom into a concert hall with optimum acoustics.