Strauss on a spring breeze

You don't have to dress up and sit in a concert hall to listen to a symphony. What about sitting on the lawn, enjoying the flowers and plants while listening to classical music?

In April, Chenshan Botanical Garden in Shanghai offers such a lush, green "concert hall" and will host the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and various artists.

Soprano Huang Ying, tenor Wei Song and violinist Huang Mengla will join the orchestra directed by Yu Long. The performance will feature masterpieces of Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, Strauss and Mendelssohn.

The event celebrates the 30th anniversary of Shanghai's Weekly Radio Concert, which aims to develop classical music lovers in the city.

Its performances, which usually have hosts to explain the music to the audience and feature affordable tickets, have been increasingly popular. This will be the first outdoor venue for the Weekly Radio Concert.

The concert on the lawn offers 4,000 seats next to the botanical garden's greenhouses. Audience can bring blankets and picnic boxes to the relatively relaxed concert. They can sit or lie on the lawn while listening to classical music and watching the sunset.

The greenhouses are home to more than 3,000 species of plants. And the botanical garden, which covers 207 hectares of area, has more than 9,000 species and 26 theme gardens.

This spring, the garden features a 1,000-meter-long flower boulevard, where 100,000 lilies, including 18 different species, are planted along the main road. The garden has also planted 300 sakura trees of 12 different species.

A ticket to the "concert on the lawn" is also good for a free visit to the botanical garden that day.

yangyijun@chinadaily.com.cn