Tenerife Symphony Orchestra
The Tenerife Symphony Orchestra (OST) played a fundamental role in changing the recognition awarded to Spanish orchestras during its meteoric national and international launching in the eighties. Nowadays, in the first years of the 21st Century and with the Orchestra already established as one of the best orchestral ensembles of Spain, the OST begins a new re-launching stage thanks to the efforts of Lü Jia, the maestro of growing international renown, who assumed the duties of new artistic director for the 2006-2007 season and finished his first season as music director and principal conductor in the 2007-2008 period.

The Tenerife Symphony Orchestra fulfills all the duties of a entity of its magnitude with almost twenty programs per year, and the season is completed with three series of didactic concerts for schools, scheduled performances at the Festival Internacional de Música de Canarias and the Festival de Ópera de Tenerife, special concerts, recordings and international tours.

Armed with the huge influence left by those great names of the music, the OST has toured the most important concert halls of Spain –Madrid, Bilbao, Valencia, Barcelona, San Sebastián, Peralada, Sevilla, Granada, Santander, Zaragoza, La Coruña or Murcia– and also appeared at some of great musical centers of Germany –at the Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festivals– and the United Kingdom, as a guest of the BBC for its presentation in London. In December, 2004, the OST started an international tour that that took the orchestra, with huge success, to the main concert halls of Cologne, Düsseldorf, Karlsruhe, Ulm, Stuttgart and Salzburg, an in June 2008 the OST took part in the II Festival de Música América-España de la Orquestay Coro Nacionales de España in the Auditorio Nacional de Música de Madrid.

A great number of its over thirty recordings for labels like Auvidis, Decca or Dutsche Grammophon have merited national and international awards, being the most significant of those the ‘Cannes Classical Awards',  the 'Grand Pri' of the Academie Française du Disque Lyrique', 'Premio Ondas' –awarded to the OST in 1992 and 1996-, 'Choc', awarded by Le Monde de la Musique, the 'Diapason d'Or' –1994 and 1995– and the OST also received the awards for the best recording of the year by the magazines CD Compact and Ritmo.

Created in 1935 as the Orquesta de Cámara de Canarias (Canary Islands Chamber Orchestra), its first conductor was Santiago Sabina. Between 1968 and 1985 that duty was in the hands of Armando Alonso. In 1970 the name was changed to Orquesta Sinfónica de Tenerife. Edmond Colomer conducted the orchestra between 1985 and 1986 and Víctor Pablo Pérez was its chief conductor from 1986 to June 2006.

Conductor: Lu Jia
Born in a musical family in Shanghai, Mr. Lu Jia learnt piano and cello from his parents. Later, he was trained by the famous conductor Mrs. Zheng Xiaoying in Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and graduated one year in advance with the highest score in 1988. In 1989, he entered the Berlin University of the Arts for further study, under the guidance of the famous Professor Han Martin and Robert Wolf.

Lu is the first Chinese conductor who conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and records all the symphonic works written by German composer Mendelssohn, and his conducting at the symphonic concerts is appraised as "very convincing interpretation of music" and "moving music with perfect conducting skills" by German and French impressionistic critics. Opera takes a special position in Lu's career. As the first Asian conductor being a director in an Italian national opera house, Lu has interpreted nearly 50 operas in Italy and Germany, the hometowns of opera. He is praised as "a conductor who knows Italian Operas better than an Italian" by the Italian music circle.

Lu used to be the principle conductor in Trieste Opera House, Florence Symphony Orchestra, Lazio Chamber Orchestra and Norrköping Symphony Orchestra as well as the guest conductor in Hallé Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Theater Dortmund and Orchestra Verdi. At present, he is the Music Director of Arena di Verona, the largest open-air opera house in the world, and Artistic Director of Tenerife Symphony Orchestra. Since September 2008, he has been the Music Director and Principle Conductor of Macau Orchestra.

Programs
Beethoven
Symphony No. 5, Op. 67

——Intermission ——

R. Strauss
Tod und Verklärung, Op. 24

R. Strauss
Till Eulenspiegels, Op. 28


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