There’s nothing quite like the late-Romantic splendour of the finale to Mahler’s First Symphony to fire up a crowd, and here the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, making their Australian debut under Chief Conductor Jaap van Zweden, demonstrated the flair and imagination that has earned the first two parts of their excellent recent Naxos Ring Cycle a slew of international plaudits. Nicely detailed percussion, attentive phrasing from the strings and fine, enthusiastic brass kicked musical arse, as they say, while the reflective central section was equally distinguished with notable contributions from concertmaster Jing Wang, who with his violinist colleague Leung Kin-fung were an impressive double act all night.

Elsewhere in this routinely programmed concert, matters were distinctly variable, and frustratingly so at times, but let’s begin at the beginning. Fung Lam is the orchestra’s Director of Orchestral Planning and the first Hong Kong composer ever to be commissioned by the BBC. His new orchestral work Quintessence attempts to encapsulate Buddhist ideas of attainment and of striving towards one’s highest goals.

An episodic work, it meanders its way home with some attractive stop-offs along the way. The violin section pass a theme from one solo instrument to the next, there’s an urban nocturne...