"It was the first time in China's music history," Yu told the media. "It was like scaling Qomolangma. It took quite a lot of courage and strength for us to successfully 'make it to the top' in five days."

On May 15, Yu will conduct the Shanghai Opera House orchestra to present a concert of Beethoven's Symphony No 7 and Piano Concerto No 5.

The young conductor considers classical music as not just art, but also a product that serves people, and yet "it has a bug", he says.

"It is sometimes difficult to serve today's public with products created more than 200 years ago, so I want to try some new approaches, like livestreaming on Bilibili, a web community dominated by the younger generation."

His symphony marathon on Bilibili achieved a peak of more than 600,000 viewers, and "even if only a small number of them were truly interested, we have reached many more people than the usual number of audience members in a concert hall", he says.

Yu went on to share his new idea about a blind box music festival, where an audience would attend a show without knowing the program in advance. The young conductor hopes to try out his new ideas in the collaboration with Shanghai Opera House, because "classical music needs new audiences, and we need new ways to interact with them".

Shanghai Opera House has regularly invited guest conductors. "Every outstanding musician has his or her own perspective in the understanding of music, and different conductors will bring new color and inspiration to an orchestra," Xu says. "Yu Lu has built a brilliant career at a young age, and I hope he will bring some youthful vitality to our orchestra."

Contact the writer at zhangkun@chinadaily.com.cn