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The Chinese classical music festival Youth Music Culture the Greater Bay Area (YMCG) launches its 10th edition today and runs through February 12, 2026. Formerly known as Youth Music Culture Guangdong, this key fixture in the cultural calendar of the nation has presented in past editions such luminaries as Yo-Yo Ma and Michael Stern.
This year’s festival highlights include mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill performing Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder as well as performances of Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben and Mahler’s Blumine. The festival’s full programming includes 23 works in diverse styles – classical, contemporary, cross-genre.
Maestro Long Yu continues as YMCG Artistic Committee Chairman, with Daniel Harding as Music Director.
As always, the festival focuses on young artists, offering educational activities and cross-cultural dialogue as well as performances.
YMCG’s two aims – showcasing the Greater Bay Area as a global cultural hub while highlighting youth creativity – now harmonize over all of the Greater Bay Area’s major cities, with the inclusion for the first time of Macao (with Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong). This year’s Greater Bay Area Festival Orchestra includes musicians from the Macao Orchestra as well as the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra, Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra, and Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.
As for the YMCG Orchestra, it includes more than 100 exceptional young musicians selected from music institutions and professional orchestras in China and abroad. They’ll be joined by a faculty of 17 principal musicians from leading international orchestras who will appear in concerts, masterclasses, and keynote lectures. These include artists such as Berlin Philharmonic cellist Martin Menking; Christopher Parkes, principal horn of the Swedish Radio Symphony; and French harpist Anna Le Dantec.
The major orchestral concerts take place in Guangzhou on February 6, Shenzhen on February 8, and Hong Kong on February 9.
