The name of the orchestra was officially changed to the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra in April 2004 with famous conductor Zuohuang Chen as its Music Director, adopting the world’s most prevalent system of music seasons.
[2] When Muhai Tang took over the music director position in 2009, he told the journalist that the orchestra was not going to focus on overseas.
In the 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 concert seasons they performed a series of Mahler symphonies, Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle, and a condensed version of Wagner's Ring Cycle.
[4] From 2015, upon close cooperation with the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, SPO has hosted Hearing China concert series and commissioned composers around the world to compose for SPO and Chinese instruments.
Most of these were orchestrated Chinese music and classical music composed by Chinese composers, made with the labels under Naxos such as Marco Polo, Yellow River and Naxos itself.