There’s nothing new about symphony orchestras performing to movies on the big screen as a way of reaching a wider audience, but what is innovative about the Sydney Symphony’s concert featuring Gustav Holst’s The Planets is that the vision is synchronised to the live music – not the other way round.

Normally, the conductor – in this case the SSO’s Conductor in Residence, Benjamin Northey – leads with one eye on the screen and the other on the score, trying to keep the musicians perfectly in time with what we are watching.

But Dutch cinematographer and former French horn player Lucas van Woerkum and his company Symphonic Cinema has made Loss, starring British film royalty Emma Thompson and Greg Wise, so that he can sit on stage during live performances by five orchestras around the world and adjust the speed of the images on a touchpad as the music is played.

The result, as concertgoers discover across these three performances, is a far more cohesive experience, with Northey able to give a freer, more naturally nuanced reading while the audience absorbs a...