2000s conductor Ye Wenbo wielded the baton with passion as the entire audience sang along to "Not Even for a Moment Can We Be Separated."

Reporter: Zhang Xingyue Videographer: Hu Hanfan Photos: Symphony Orchestra

At 19:30 on October 1, the large-scale symphonic concert of classic hits "My Motherland and I" was staged at the Chengdu City Concert Hall, a famous concert hall in Sichuan. Post-2000s young conductor Ye Wenbo took the stage in a Chinese tunic suit and passionately wielded the baton for the well-known domestic LAI ZHI YIN Symphony Orchestra, presenting an approximately 110-minute performance to nearly 2,000 domestic and international audience members. When the melody of the finale piece "My Motherland and I" sounded, the entire audience spontaneously stood up and sang along with the music. The concert ended amid singing and applause, with cheers and ovations lasting 2 minutes. The entire performance received 36 rounds of enthusiastic applause from the audience, offering a grand National Day gift to the motherland with magnificent movements.

 

This concert was planned around the concept of "classic hits + live symphony," without the use of recorded accompaniment. The concert opened with "Ode to the Red Flag." The horn theme of the brass section and the broad unfolding of the strings quickly brought the venue into a festive atmosphere. Sixteen classic works, including "The White-Haired Girl Suite," "Dance of the Yao People," "Under the Hawthorn Tree," "Red Detachment of Women Suite," "Symphony No. 1," "The Founding of a Republic," "My Motherland," and "Leading the Way," were presented in sequence, covering different dimensions such as ethnic classics, expressions of home and country, and memories of the times.

The conductor of this concert, Ye Wenbo, is a young conductor active on China's music stage in recent years, holding a master's degree in conducting, a member of the Sichuan Musicians Association, and a member of the Sichuan Choral Association. He has devoted himself to the fields of conducting and songwriting. As early as his middle school years, he set his aspiration: to bring classic music to more ordinary listeners. He successively studied under the famous conductor and former vice president of Sichuan Conservatory of Music Professor Li Xilin, as well as Professor Yao Chuncheng and Associate Professor Chen Tao, focusing on conducting, songwriting, and music art education. At present, he serves as the head, artistic director, and chief conductor of the LAI ZHI YIN Symphony Orchestra, and has been appointed as the permanent conductor of the Sichuan Nanchong Song and Dance Theater. He has also been engaged by several large song and dance theaters (troupes) and social organizations as artistic director or permanent conductor. He has been evaluated by a famous literary and art critic as "a cutting-edge young conductor of the new generation."

Over the years, Ye Wenbo has traveled to major domestic cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Chongqing, and Xi'an to perform on stage, completing a cumulative total of more than 100 conducted performances, with a total audience of over 100,000. He has held special symphonic concerts of "The Yellow River," "Butterfly Lovers," "New Year's Eve," "Castle in the Sky," as well as works by Beethoven, Strauss, Bach, Mozart, Brahms, and others. On May 1 of this year, at the age of only 24, he successfully held a large-scale symphonic choral concert of the complete "Yellow River Cantata" with a hundred-person symphony orchestra and chorus at a famous domestic concert hall. This made him the youngest young conductor in China to independently conduct the complete work since the debut of "Yellow River Cantata," and he carried out a tour, receiving high praise from musicians such as Li Xilin, Li Danyang, Wu Songjin, Wang Chijiu, and Wang Zhixin. At the invitation of the famous songwriter Wu Songjin, he conducted the "Songjin—Shenzhou Musical Painting" orchestral suite New Year concert at the Chengdu City Concert Hall. As a Chinese conductor, he was invited in July of this year to conduct the Spezze Music Festival Symphony Orchestra in Greece...

The famous conductor and music educator Professor Li Xilin previously evaluated Ye Wenbo: "I have seen him walk all the way through hardships, with unswerving thirst for knowledge and tenacity, exploration and humility, maintaining a low profile and working steadily, performing a symphonic movement of excellent life qualities and a steady and far-reaching career." After the performance of "Yellow River Cantata," he once said that Ye Wenbo "achieved a perfect unity of technique and emotion, confirming that 'steady progress leads to lasting success.'"

Ye Wenbo's music composition mentor, the famous lyricist and former director of the creative office of the Political Department of the Navy Art Troupe Wang Chijiu, previously evaluated: "Under his baton, symphonic music is no longer merely a combination of notes, but a soul-stirring audio-visual feast." It is understood that Ye Wenbo's original song works in different styles, such as "Reporting to Motherland," "Always a Striving Youth," "Ode to Red Plum Blossoms Being Sung," "Zhang Daqian," and "A Ya," have won national and provincial awards many times.

The members of the orchestra for this concert all come from domestic and international music academies or performance institutions, with footprints across major cities nationwide. The orchestra stated that presenting classic melodies with pure, profound live acoustic sound has been its consistent performance approach in recent years. According to the organizer, this performance is a major component of the LAI ZHI YIN Orchestra's 2026 autumn performance season. After this, the orchestra will also launch the "Later·Encounter" concert series in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Chongqing, Haikou, and other cities.

"My motherland and I, not even for a moment can we be separated." When this lyric, sung by several generations, sounded simultaneously in the concert hall, what it carried was both personal memory and devotion to home and country.