An Orchestra from Taiwan: The Evergreen Symphony and the Violins That Cross the Sea

Tokyo (July 21) sold out. Tickets for Niigata (July 22) remain available.

In July 2026, the Taipei-based Evergreen Symphony Orchestra performs in Tokyo and Niigata — Jaap van Zweden on the podium, baritone Thomas Hampson as soloist, and violins from the workshops of the Stradivari and Guarneri families in the players' hands. An all-Mahler programme, and a closer look at one of Asia's most distinctive orchestras.

Taiwan's only privately run professional orchestra

The Evergreen Symphony Orchestra (ESO) was founded in 2002 under the Chang Yung-Fa Foundation, established by Chang Yung-Fa, founder of Taiwan's Evergreen Group. To this day it remains the only professional orchestra in Taiwan operated by a private foundation.

A "corporate orchestra" might suggest a vanity project. The record says otherwise: more than 90 performances in 36 cities across 12 countries, and appearances alongside Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and Lang Lang. Anyone who has flown EVA Air has quite possibly heard the orchestra already — its recordings supply the airline's in-flight music.

The van Zweden effect

In January 2025 the orchestra welcomed Jaap van Zweden — former Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, now Music Director of the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra — as its Artist-in-Residence. A conductor who has led some of the world's great orchestras, joining forces with an ambitious young ensemble from Asia — the chemistry of this partnership has become one of the most closely watched stories in Taiwan's classical scene, and the Japan tour offers a first-hand account of where it stands.

A singer who studies the songs: baritone Thomas Hampson

The soloist is the American baritone Thomas Hampson. Since his Metropolitan Opera debut in 1986, he has sung more than 80 roles at the world's leading houses, including the Vienna State Opera — Don Giovanni, Eugene Onegin, Rodrigo in Don Carlo; a roll call of opera's leading men.

Mahler, moreover, is the composer Hampson has lived with most deeply. His recordings with Leonard Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic — Songs of a Wayfarer among them — made his name worldwide, and for Des Knaben Wunderhorn, the very repertoire on this programme, he contributed to the 2008 critical edition. A singer who not only performs the songs but researches them: for Mahler devotees, that alone makes this an event.

All Mahler: where song becomes symphony

The first half brings five songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn ("The Youth's Magic Horn"), Mahler's settings of an early-19th-century folk-poetry anthology — soldiers, children and lovers, drawn with humour, irony and sudden grief. Among the five is "Urlicht", the song later absorbed, almost unchanged, into the fourth movement of the Second Symphony. Few works show more eloquently how, for Mahler, song and symphony were one continuous landscape.

The second half is Symphony No. 1, "Titan" — Mahler's first symphony, completed in 1888 and premiered in Budapest the following year — originally in the form of a five-movement symphonic poem. Melodies from his own Songs of a Wayfarer flow into the opening movement; the third begins with a minor-key "Frère Jacques" in the double basses, a strangely warped funeral march; and then the storm of the finale. An evening that begins in song and ends in symphonic eruption — rewarding for first-time listeners and seasoned Mahlerians alike.

Legendary violins on stage — and more to look forward to

The tour carries one further attraction. Members of the orchestra will perform on violins from the workshops of the Stradivari family — the instruments the world knows as “Stradivarius” — and of the Guarneri family, rare instruments sponsored by the Chang Yung-Fa Foundation. A single such instrument makes headlines; here, several share one stage. How it sounds when violins that have survived three centuries play together is a question only the concert hall can answer.

Meet-and-greet sessions with the artists are also planned in Tokyo and Niigata (details from the presenters), and the orchestra intends to return to Japan's Kansai region this autumn. July may mark the beginning of a long relationship between this orchestra and Japanese audiences.

Evergreen Symphony Orchestra — Japan Tour

TOKYO

• Tuesday, July 21, 2026, 7:00 p.m. (doors 6:00 p.m.), Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre Concert Hall

• S ¥12,000 / A ¥10,000 / B ¥8,000 / C ¥6,000 — SOLD OUT

NIIGATA

• Wednesday, July 22, 2026, 7:00 p.m. (doors 6:15 p.m.), Ryutopia Niigata City Performing Arts Center, Concert Hall

• S ¥10,000 / A ¥8,000 / B ¥6,000 / C ¥4,000 — Tickets via 7-Ticket

ARTISTS / PROGRAMME

• Conductor: Jaap van Zweden / Baritone: Thomas Hampson

• Mahler: Five songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn; Symphony No. 1, "Titan"