©Photo: Chris Christodoulou

Lan Shui with SSO in Berlin Philharmonie

©Photo: Oliver Killig

Lan Shui with SSO in Prague Smetana Hall

©Photo: Prague Spring Festival – Ivan Malý

©Photo: Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Lan Shui

Conductor

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“One cannot avoid comparing what Shui has achieved in Singapore with what George Szell did in Cleveland or Simon Rattle in Birmingham. He has turned a good regional orchestra into a world-class ensemble”
(American Record Guide)

Conductor Laureate: Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Honorary Conductor: Copenhagen Phil
Principal Guest Conductor: Taiwan Symphony Orchestra
Artistic Advisor: China National Symphony Orchestra

Lan Shui is renowned for his abilities as an orchestral builder and for his passion in commissioning, premiering and recording new works by leading composers from Asia and elsewhere on the international contemporary orchestral scene.

In the 2024/25 season Shui continues as Principal Guest Conductor of Taiwan Symphony Orchestra where he returns for several performances including the season opening with Brahms Double Concerto for Violin and Cello and Richard Strauss Ein Heldenleben. It is also the inaugurating season for him as Artistic Advisor of China National Symphony Orchestra with whom he opens the season with Bruckner’s Symphony No.7 and pays tribute to anniversaries of Ravel and Schönberg by featuring their music later in the season. Other highlights include a return to Copenhagen Phil and a performance of Verdi’s Requiem in June 2025 with Dresdner Musikfestspiele.

Shui’s 2023/24 season included regular appearances with the Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, as well as returns to China Philharmonic, Shanghai Symphony, Guangzhou Symphony and Hangzhou Philharmonic orchestras. A highlight of the season included a tour of China with the Philharmonia Orchestra in January 2024, with seven performances including one inaugurating the new hall of Beijing Performing Arts Centre, of varied repertoire, including music by Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Elgar and Dvořák.

Shui served as the Music Director of Singapore Symphony Orchestra from 1997 to 2019, with American Record Review noting that Shui“turned a good regional orchestra into a world-class ensemble that plays its heart out at every concert”. Together they made several acclaimed tours to Europe, Asia and the United States and appeared for the first time at the BBC Proms in September 2014. As of January 2019, Shui has been appointed SSO’s Conductor Laureate. Shui Shui also held the position of Chief Conductor of Copenhagen Philharmonic from 2007 to 2015, currently serving as the orchestra’s Honorary Conductor. From January 2019, he is the principal Guest Conductor of Taiwan Symphony Orchestra.

In the United States he has appeared with Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, and Baltimore and Detroit symphony orchestras. In Europe he has performed with Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, hr-Sinfonieorchester, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, Gothenburg Symphony, Orchestre National de France, Royal Swedish Orchestra and Orchestre National de Lille. In Asia he has conducted the Hong Kong, Malaysian and Japan Philharmonic Orchestras and maintains a close relationship with China and Hangzhou Philharmonic Orchestras and Shanghai and Guangzhou Symphony Orchestras.

Since 1998 Shui has recorded over 40 CDs with Singapore Symphony Orchestra for BIS — including the first ever complete cycle of Tcherepnin’s symphonies plus complete orchestra works of Rachmaninov and Debussy. He also recorded Beethoven’s complete symphonies with Copenhagen Philharmonic. His albums have received Grammy nominations twice.

Shui is the recipient of several international awards from the Beijing Arts Festival and the New York Tcherepnin Society, the 37^th Besançon Conductors’ Competition in France and Boston University (Distinguished Alumni Award) as well as the Cultural Medallion — Singapore’s highest accolade in the arts.

Born in Hangzhou, China, Shui studied composition at the Shanghai Conservatory and graduated from The Beijing Central Conservatory. He continued his graduate studies at Boston University while at the same time working closely with Leonard Bernstein at the Tanglewood Music Festival. He has worked together with David Zinman as Conducting Affiliate of Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, as Associate Conductor to Neeme Järvi at Detroit Symphony Orchestra, with Kurt Masur at New York Philharmonic and with Pierre Boulez at The Cleveland Orchestra.

HarrisonParrott represents Lan Shui for worldwide general management.

Lan Shui - Rachmaninov: Isle of the Dead (excerpt) © Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Lan Shui - Seascapes (excerpt) © BIS

Lan Shui - Zhou Long: The Rhyme of Taigu (excerpt) © Singapore Symphony Orchestra

“But it’s the second half of this disc that surely justifies the epithet ‘Russian Spectacular’. I doubt whether you’ll hear a more pulsating and brilliantly executed performance of the Lyapunov orchestration of Balakirev’s Islamey than this version. Such a tour de force. Shui inspires orchestra and an enthusiastic chorus to bring an irresistible rhythmic verve and suitably high-voltage excitement to Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances.”

(BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE – ‘Russian Spectacular’ album review – Erik Levi, Aug 2021)

“Shui gauges structure, pacing and emotional intensity with focus and flexibility throughout. The orchestra glows from within, bringing rich, pungent textures and expressive subtlety, with the great soaring melodies breathing deep, vocal oxygen into the interplay between darkness and light.”

(MusicWeb International, July/August 2021, Ian Julier)

“Sound quality shoots up quite a few notches for Rachmaninov’s Symphonies and Orchestral Music’ featuring the excellent Singapore Symphony Orchestra under the assured leadership of Lan Shui… It would be difficult to imagine a more compelling or indeed idiomatic account of the First Symphony than Shui’s, which makes the score’s
initial failure inconceivable. Shui doesn’t dawdle or swoon but instead responds to the music’s passionately animated nature.”

(Gramophone Magazine, May 2021, Rob Cowan)

“Lan Shui charges into what must surely be the most evil-sounding and best-recorded Strauss’ Macbeth I have ever heard. This version surpasses both the violence and the lyricism of every version I know (…) As for Tod und Verklärung, without question and in any event this is the lushest reading of the tone poem I have ever heard. Lan Shui proves himself a first class Straussian. This is one of the finest-sounding releases I have ever heard, and I am stunned by the world- class quality of the Singapore Symphony.”

(Steven Kruger, Fanfare Magazine, September/October 2020)

‘But the best is yet to come with Tod und Verklärung . Normally, this work is already a source of great emotion. It must be said that it sends us back to this quest for the absolute that underlies our existence, but here it is unheard of! What momentum, what a sound wave! It almost feels like Judgment Day. After tremendous successes on the side of Debussy (Bis also), Lan Shui and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra have once again achieved a real tour de force’.

(Bertrand Balmitgere, Crescendo Magazine, June 2020)

“This conductor has a sure grasp of the Debussian idiom, and that shines through in his seductively shaped performances. The SSO immediately impress with a Printemps that begins with playing of limpid loveliness; indeed, the whole performance has all the colour and flecks of detail one could wish for, not to mention an unfailingly sensuous line. Lan Shui is a thoroughly sympathetic accompanist, his delicate rhythms and subtly shifting dynamics as natural — as intuitive — as you’ll hear anywhere. A quite splendid conclusion to Lan Shui’s Debussy project.”

(Musicweb international, 2019)

“In Debussy’s Nocturnes, Lan Shui increases the atmospheric density of the composer’s music in an exciting way. The Rhapsody from 1908 in the orchestration by Roger-Ducasse (1919) becomes a fascinating musical tableau. The other pieces are no less pleasing, because of their rich sound, a great inner tension, rich colours, subtle pianissimi, grandiose fortissimi, as well as lush and warm colours.”

(Pizzicato, June 2019)

“Musically, the performance was on an entirely different level from the opera’s premiere 2010 run…Lan Shui led the players from the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and a chorus of local singers with a firm dramatic sweep that sacrificed none of the music’s rhythmic details.”

(Ken Smith, Opera Magazine, July 2019)

“Lan Shui’s Debussy: Jeux, Khamma, La Boîte à joujoux recording is the best I know… Shui’s balancing of the orchestral forces is exemplary. His control of the work’s fleeting contrasts and fluidity are beautifully realized by every section of the orchestra, and are capture in warm, clear sound in the fine acoustic”

(Fanfare, January 2018)

“Lively speeds which never sound hurried. Sparky, well-articulated playing, the period brass adding a distinctive colour. Crisp, clear, recording. All present….These discs are an utter joy, and spot comparisons with other, better-known recordings confirm that Lan Shui’s Copenhagen players deserve to be up there with the best. …an Eroica that’s among the best I’ve heard. Life-enhancing stuff.”

(Graham Rickson, The Arts Desk, August 2016)

“Lan Shui – an impeccable stylist whose body language is as serious as it can be charming and courteous – took the strings to the edge, living dangerously and developing a tone, attack and dynamic range one doesn’t find so often”

(Classical Source, Ateş Orga, May 2016)

“[Beethoven symphonies 1 – 4] Throughout the four symphonies (..) nearly every phrase is more penetrating and more energized than you have ever heard it before.”

(Fanfare, July/August 2015)

“[Beethoven: Complete Symphonies Vol. 1 by Copenhagen Phil] “this is genuinely refreshing Beethoven (…) which should always be a cause for celebration”

(Andrew McGregor, BBC Radio 3, May 2015)