Changchun's restored Fengle Theatre to host orchestral New Year concert

Inside the Jilin Provincial Music Hall, formerly known as the Fengle Theatre, musicians are busy tuning their instruments and practicing scales. The Jilin Symphony Orchestra is rehearsing for its New Year's concert, a moment that signals the reopening of a historic venue now re-entering Changchun's cultural life.

Scheduled for 7 pm on Dec 31, the concert will be the first major performance held at the venue since the completion of its restoration.

The program pairs Chinese classics, including The Yellow River Piano Concerto and Butterfly Lovers, with works by the Strauss family, whose waltzes and polkas are closely associated with Vienna's New Year's Concert tradition. Among them is Johann Strauss I's Chinese Gallop, a piece shaped by 19th-century European imaginings of China.

In a post on its official WeChat account, the orchestra said the program was designed to move between Chinese and Western musical traditions.

For orchestra members, the concert's significance is inseparable from the venue itself. Song Yujia, the orchestra's principal trumpet and a Changchun native, recalls passing the building as a child, when the surrounding streets were a center for film screenings and performances.