Maestro Long Yu

Yu is a conductor, musician, and cultural architect who has helped redefine China's classical music landscape. He serves as Music Director and Artistic Director for two of the country's leading orchestras, the China Philharmonic Orchestra and the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. He also chairs the Beijing Music Festival, one of Asia's most prestigious cultural events.

Born in Shanghai in 1964, Yu belongs to the first generation of Chinese musicians who studied abroad after the Cultural Revolution. His unique foundation blends rigorous training with a deep interest in culture and society, enabling him to expand Chinese orchestras internationally, establish key festivals, and create educational programs that bridge tradition with innovation.

Yu's journey to conducting began in his late teens, during a transformative period in Chinese history. Growing up during the Cultural Revolution, he initially trained as a pianist and percussionist.

"After the Cultural Revolution, when China reopened to the world, many orchestras came to China to give us concerts. We had never seen a conductor before in such a passionate way doing classical music.”

At just 18 years old, Yu made the bold decision to change his major to conducting. That teenage dream led to his professional debut in Germany, launching a career that has now spanned over three decades.

Berlin is where Yu's conducting career truly took shape.

When he arrived in West Berlin in 1987 at the age of twenty three, Yu became part of the first generation of Chinese musicians to study abroad after China reopened to the world. Berlin quickly became more than a place to study, it became a second home.

Reflecting on returning to conduct at the Berlin Philharmonic in 2024, Yu expresses amazement at his own journey since he first studied there so many years ago. “Every corner makes me smile at the history of the time when I was here,” he says. Today, both Shanghai and Berlin carry deep personal and artistic meaning for him.

For Yu, conducting is much more than a technical skill. It’s about creativity, connection, and serving the music itself.

"You must be a very passionate and interesting person. Nobody wants to work with a boring person. Creativity is always the question, no matter the generation."

His philosophy stems from a profound conversation with his late mentor Ronald Wilford, one of the world’s leading music managers. Wilford told him, “Creativity comes from how to lose yourself.” Yu believes that if you focus too much on yourself, your ego, appearance, or how you’re perceived, you cannot truly create something meaningful. Instead, creativity requires setting aside the self to fully concentrate on the music. 

Success in music, Yu insists, comes from dedication that audiences rarely see. “Great artists definitely sleep less than normal people,” he says. “They definitely give more time to practice with their instrument or spend more time studying, doing more concerts, traveling more.”

Artistic life is not that beautiful like people see on stage. You have to think about behind the stage, how much energy people give for the moment which is presented to you. They're probably practicing 100 times, 1,000 times, or even 10,000 times to give you the performance on stage for a couple of minutes of beautiful music.

In his concerts, Maestro Yu sees music as a way to bring people together. He believes that when people listen to the same music, they enter a shared space of passion and understanding, sharing emotions like happiness and sadness together. For Yu, music is the ultimate connector. It transcends words and explanations. “In this room,” he says, “we breathe each other’s air and share this moment with passion.”

Every single person has their own way to interpret the music. I feel music is the best way to bridge people’s hearts to each other.

One of Maestro Long Yu’s most significant contributions is founding the Beijing Music Festival in 1997, with its first major festival held in 1998. At a time when few international orchestras performed in China, the festival broke new ground by bringing landmark works like Wagner’s Ring Cycle and Mozart’s Requiem to Chinese audiences. Maestro Yu calls the festival “a window,” offering China a glimpse into global culture while sharing China’s musical voice with the world.

“The main role is to bring all the interesting culture, music, concerts, performance, opera to the audience,” he explains. “People think a concert is simply a concert. It's not only that. We bring also the history.”

Yu reflects on the festival's recent programming where the Cape Town Opera brought the complete Gershwin's Porgy and Bess opera to Beijing. “When you see all those African singers singing on stage, I really just simply loved them,” he says. “How they gave their passion to the stage and let people feel from different corners of the world. Everyone was so inspired.”

UBS has proudly sponsored the festival for more than 20 years.

Yu approaches music and life with a simple belief: learning never ends.

He says that every moment, even the small ones, offers a chance to discover something new about the world, about others, and about ourselves. This spirit of curiosity shapes how he mentors young musicians, encouraging them to stay open, humble, and engaged with the world around them.

Through initiatives like the Beijing Music Festival, he creates opportunities for emerging artists to grow, collaborate, and find their voices. His advice is quiet but powerful: be a good person first, stay curious, and keep learning. Because that, he believes, is how great artists are truly made.

Today young people have a much better life than we did. But we have to hand over something spiritual to them, to know how to inspire people, how to serve musical lovers, and how to work for the people.