In honour of the Lantern Festival – the 15th day of the first lunar month and the first significant feast after Chinese New Year – Tan Dun joined the Sydney Symphony Orchestra for a celebration of Chinese music and culture, Music under the Moon.

With a full moon beaming over the heat-wave stricken Sydney Harbour, the programme opened with 100 Birds Flying Towards the Phoenix, Guan Xia’s concerto for suona and orchestra, which had its premiere just last week with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. The concerto is based on an old folk tune Xia heard as a child growing up in Henan province. It tells the story of the phoenix: a bird who would diligently save discarded fruits and nuts, becoming a hero in the bird world by generously sharing its hoard when drought struck.

The suona – a Chinese double-reed instrument, similar to an oboe, but shorter and with a wide, flared bell – is renowned for its ability to mimic bird calls and soloist Liu Wenwen (a 13th generation inheritor of the shona tradition) made full use of this in her brilliant, characterful performance. She produced wild, fluid slides and and an incredible array of bird...