Japanese-American conductor Kent Nagano

The debut performances by Canada's world-class Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (OSM) in Beijing and Shanghai have won the applause and admiration of Chinese audiences.

As one of the featured acts of the Beijing Music Festival, the orchestra, under the baton of two-time Grammy winner Japanese-American conductor Kent Nagano, presented a concert in the Forbidden City Music Hall to commemorate the 150th birthday of German composer Richard Strauss.

Their second concert was in Shanghai at the Oriental Art Center as part of the 16th Shanghai International Arts Festival.

The OSM played Strauss's Symphonia Domestica (Domestic Symphony), Tod und Verklarung (Death and Transfiguration) and Vier Letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs) performed by prizewinning Russian operatic soprano Olga Peretyatko.

China was the second stop on the OSM's Asia tour after Japan. In Koriyama, the OSM gave a charity concert in memory of the 2011 Fukushima earthquake.

The OSM was originally formed in 1934 by Canadian conductor and pianist Wilfrid Pelletier and became a household name under the directorship of Charles Dutoit, who also conducted the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra in concerts in Beijing and Shanghai.

The excellence of the OSM has been demonstrated over the course of more than 40 national and international tours. It has toured in Asia nine times, visiting Japan on eight of those occasions, has toured Europe 11 times and South America thrice.

The OSM has also performed at the Hollywood Bowl, as well as the Ravinia and Tanglewood festivals in the US. From 1982 to 2004, the orchestra was an almost annual visitor to Carnegie Hall, where it played to packed houses.

The March 8, 2008 concert marked the orchestra's Carnegie Hall debut under Maestro Nagano.

The current tour was Nagano's first visit to China. Before he signed with the OSM, Nagano had conducted with many world-class orchestras in Europe and the US.

Chinese audiences, who are familiar with Seiji Ozawa, the China-born Japanese conductor, wonder how Kent Nagano, a third-generation Japanese immigrant who never lived in Asia, made it.

"In a logical way of thinking, my mindset has no connection with Eastern culture," Nagano said. "But I have strong feeling about Asian music, like an instinct."

With the OSM, Nagano has made several commercial recordings. His current contract with the OSM runs through 2016. He is also a member of the Russian National Orchestra's conductor collegium.